“I shall do my best, Aunt Hepsy,” returned the girl meekly.

“Mamma never pared potatoes, Aunt Hepsy,” said Tom boldly.

“No; I know she didn’t, boy,” said Miss Hepsy severely.  “Your mother was as useless as a bit o’ Sunday china.—­I hope you won’t be like her, Lucy.”

“I hope she will, Aunt Hepsy,” spoke up Tom again.  “Mamma was perfectly splendid, everybody said.”

“You’d better go outside, boy,” said Miss Hepsy wrathfully, “till you learn to speak respectfully to your aunt.  I know what your mother was.  She was my own sister, I hope.”

Tom caught up his cap and fled, nothing loath; his aunt irritated him, and made him forget himself.

“How old are you, child?” said Miss Hepsy, turning to Lucy, after a moment’s silence.

“I am fourteen past, Aunt Hepsy; Tom is twelve.”

Miss Hepsy dropped her paring-knife and stared.

“Bless me, child, you don’t look more’n nine, and that great boy looks years older’n you.  What have ye fed on?”

Lucy smiled faintly.  “I have not been very strong this summer, Aunt Hepsy; and I was so anxious about mamma being so poorly.  I couldn’t sleep at nights, nor eat anything hardly.  I suppose that’s what made me thin.”  Miss Hepsy sniffed.

“Have any of ye been to school?” was her next question.

“No, Aunt Hepsy.  Papa taught us till he died, and then mamma kept up our lessons as well as she could.  Tom is a good scholar; and, oh, such a beautiful painter!”

“Painter!” echoed Miss Hepsy.  “What, fence rails and gates?”

Lucy looked very much shocked.  “Oh no; he draws landscapes and things, and went to the Art School as long as mamma could afford it.  Then he practised at home.  He means to be a great painter some day, like the ones he read about.”

“Humph!” said Miss Hepsy contemptuously.  “I guess his uncle’ll find him work in painting the farm an’ the gates afresh this fall.  It’ll save a man.  Now then, there’s them taters on.  Come upstairs an’ I’ll show you your room.”

Lucy rose at once, and obediently followed her aunt along the wide flagged passage and up the polished oak steps to a tiny little chamber in the attic fiat.  It was poorly furnished, but it was scrupulously clean; and from the window Lucy’s delighted eyes caught a glimpse of the broad green meadow, the shining water of the river, and beyond, the houses of the town nestling in the shadow of the giant slopes of Pendle Peak.

“Your brother’s room is on t’other side o’ the landing,” explained Miss Hepsy; “an’ I’ll ’spect you to keep ’em both as clean’s a new pin.  I’m mighty partickler, mind, an’ can’t abide untidiness.  An’ if yer mother’s brought ye up to think yersel’ a lady, the sooner ye get rid of that notion the better, ’cos yell have to work here; we don’t keep no idle hands.  Get off your hat an’ cape now, an’ come down as fast’s ye like, an’ help set the table for dinner.”