“It won’t be much,” she said to Betty, “but it will show she is not forgotten;” and so the stocking grew, and was shaped from a half-worn pair which Ethelyn used to wear, and on which Aunt Barbara’s tears dropped as she thought of the dear little feet, now wandered so far away, which the stockings used to cover.

Christmas came, and Susie Granger sang of Bethlehem in the old stone church, and other fingers than Ethie’s swept the organ keys, and the Christmas tree was set up, and the presents were hung upon the boughs, and the names were called, and Aunt Barbara was there, but the lamb’s-wool stockings were at home in the bureau drawer; there was no one to wear them, no one to take them from the tree, if they had been put there; Ethie had not come.

CHAPTER XXVII

AFFAIRS AT OLNEY

Richard could not stay in Camden, where everything reminded him so much of Ethelyn, and at his mother’s earnest solicitations he went back to Olney, taking with him all the better articles of furniture which Ethie had herself selected, and which converted the plain farmhouse into quite a palace, as both Andy and his mother thought.  The latter did not object to them in the least, and was even conscious of a feeling of pride and satisfaction when her neighbors came in to admire, and some of them to envy her the handsome surroundings.  Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s lesson, though a very bitter one, was doing Richard good, especially as it was adroitly followed up by Melinda Jones, who, on the strength of her now being his sister-elect, took the liberty of saying to him some pretty plain things with regard to his former intercourse with Ethie.

James had finally nerved himself to the point of asking Melinda if she could be happy with such a homespun fellow as himself, and Melinda had answered that she thought she could, hinting that it was possible for him to overcome much which was homespun about him.

“I do not expect you to leave off your heavy boots or your coarse frock when your work requires you to wear them,” she said, stealing her hand into his in a caressing kind of way; “but a man can be a gentleman in any dress.”

James promised to do his best, and with Melinda Jones for a teacher, had no fear of his success.  And so, some time in August, when the summer work at the Jones’ was nearly done, Melinda came to the farmhouse and was duly installed as mistress of the chamber which James and John had occupied—­the latter removing his Sunday clothes, and rifle, and fishing lines, and tobacco, and the slippers Ethie had given him, into Andy’s room, which he shared with his brother.  Mrs. Markham, senior, got on better with Melinda than she had with Ethelyn; Melinda knew exactly how to manage her, and, indeed, how to manage the entire household, from Richard down to Andy, who, though extremely kind and attentive to her, never loved her as he did Ethelyn.