University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
EDNA ACCEPTS.

DURING the last few months Edna's school had
not been as large as usual, and when at last it
closed for the summer vacation, it numbered only
fifteen scholars, and she was not quite certain that she

should open it again. She was as popular as ever. No
one had aught to say against her, but Uncle Phil's “Synagogue”
had gotten him into a world of trouble, and made
him many enemies. So long as the work made little or no
progress, the people were quiet and regarded the thing as a
crazy kind of project which, let alone, would die a natural
death. And for a time it did bid fair to do so, for what
with the trouble to get men, and the fearfully high prices
when he did get them, and the bother it was to see to them,
Uncle Phil was inclined to take the matter easy, and after
the cellar-wall was laid, there were weeks and months
during which nothing was done, and Squire Gardner said,
with a knowing wink, “We hain't lost the old man yet,”
and began to talk seriously of repairing his own church and
having the ladies get up a Fair, of which his wife and Ruth
were to be head and front. Accordingly Ruth came down
one day to talk with Edna about it, and get her interested,
as with her taste and skill she was sure to be a powerful ally
if once enlisted in the cause. But Edna would not commit
herself, and Ruth returned home disheartened and disappointed.

That night Uncle Phil was attacked with dizziness and a
rush of blood to his head, which frightened him nearly out
of his wits.

“I can't die yet,” he said, when recovered somewhat,
“but it came pretty nigh takin' me off. Yes, yes; had a
narrer escape; but I can't go yet; it's no use talkin'. I
ain't ready, and that synagogue business ain't moved a peg
this two months; but if the Lord will set me on my legs
agin, I promise to go at it at once. Try me and see if I
don't.”

He was taken at his word, and once well again he attacked
the chapel with a right good-will, and brought out
men from Millville, and boarded them himself, and kept

them at work early and late, and proved so conclusively
that he was in earnest, that his opponents took the alarm,
and waiting upon him a second time grew so warm and even
provoking that Uncle Phil blazed up fiercely, and said he
wouldn't give a red toward any other church, nor ask anybody
to give to his, and swore so hard that the Unitarians
asked “how soon he intended to be confirmed;” while the
Orthodox added that “it was of such materials the Episcopal
church was composed,” and then Uncle Phil wondered
if he was not being “persecuted for righteousness'
sake,” and if it would not be put to his account as a kind of
offset for the hay he had raked up and gotten into the barn
away from the rain on two or three different Sundays which
he could remember.

People did not mean to mix Edna up in her uncle's quarrel,
but it affected her nevertheless, and on one pretext and
another the Gardners left the school, while others gradually
dropped off too, until Edna began seriously to think she
might be obliged to seek employment elsewhere, and had
some thoughts of going to New York and devoting herself
wholly to her favorite occupation,—drawing and painting.
She and Jack were the best of friends, and through him she
hoped to get a situation in the city, and she was about
writing to him with reference to it, when she heard from
Maude of Roy's plan concerning herself, and then received
his letter containing the offer, which she decided at once to
accept. Among her other accomplishments, she numbered
that of imitating, or adapting herself with great facility to
different styles of handwriting, and this was a help to her
now. Roy knew her natural handwriting, and it was
necessary that she should take another. Next to her own,
the style she used with the most ease was a pretty, running
back-hand, and she adopted this in the letter she wrote to
Mr. Leighton accepting his offer, and naming the first of

September as the most convenient time for her to come to
Leighton, provided it suited Mrs. Churchill. It did suit
Mrs. Churchill, who seemed much better now that she had
something to look forward to, and who began to take a
great interest in having everything comfortable and pleasant
for the stranger.

“I shall want her near me, of course,” she said to Georgie,
who was often at the house; “and yet I do not wish
her to feel as if she were a prisoner, tied close to my side.
Here's this little room opening out of mine; but I think it
is too small, don't you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Churchill stepped
into the hall, and opening a door directly opposite her own,
continued:

“I have about decided to give her this one. It is near
my own, and very pleasant too. Do you think she will like
it?”

Georgie did not say that this room, with the bay-window
and fine river view, was the one of all others which she
would choose for her own, in case she was ever fortunate
enough to reign as mistress of the house, but she did suggest
that Miss Overton ran some risk of being spoiled if the
best were given her at first. “I dare say the little room opening
from yours is quite as good as she has been accustomed
to, and will suit her very well,” she said, but Mrs. Churchill
did not think so. She felt a deep interest in the young
stranger, and wished everything to be as pleasant for her as
possible.

“If I could only see better, I should know if things were
right,” she said; “but I can't, and I wish you would superintend
a little, and if anything is out of place, see that it is
righted.”

And so it came about that Georgie, instead of Maude,
saw to the arranging of Edna's room, which, though not

quite so handsomely furnished as some of the others, was
the largest and pleasantest chamber in the house. Georgie
had always coveted it, and now as she stood giving some
directions to the housemaid, she felt a pang of envy toward
the young girl who was to occupy it, and live under the
same roof with Roy. She was too proud to acknowledge even
to herself that she was jealous of a school-mistress, but she
could not help envying her in some respects, and as she was
very curious to see her, she waited with almost as much impatience
as did Mrs. Churchill herself for the arrival of the
stranger.