She caught the orphan in her strong arms and kissed her, and cried and laughed alternately.

A young girl, apparently about Edna’s age, and a tall, lank young man, with yellow hair full of meal dust, came out of the house, and looked on in stupid wonder.

“Why, children! don’t you know little Edna that lived at Aaron Hunt’s—­his granddaughter?  This is my Tabitha and my son Willis, that tends the mill and takes care of us, now my poor Peter—­God rest his soul!—­is dead and buried these three years.  Bring some seats, Willis.  Sit down here by me, Edna, and take off your bonnet, child, and let me see you.  Umph! umph!  Who’d have thought it?  What a powerful handsome woman you have made, to be sure! to be sure!  Well! well!  The very saints up in glory can’t begin to tell what children will turn out!  Lean your face this way.  Why, you a’n’t no more like that little bare-footed, tangle-haired, rosy-faced Edna that used to run around these woods in striped homespun, hunting the cows, than I, Dorothy Elmira Wood, am like the Queen of Sheba when she went up visiting to Jerusalem to call on Solomon.  How wonderful pretty you are!  And how soft and white your hands are!  Now I look at you good I see you are like your mother, Hester Earl; and she was the loveliest, mild little pink in the county.  You are taller than your mother, and prouder-looking; but you have got her big, soft, shining, black eyes; and your mouth is sweet and sorrowful, and patient as hers always was, after your father fell off that frosty roof and broke his neck.  Little Edna came back a fine, handsome woman, looking like a queen!  But, honey, you don’t seem healthy, like my Tabitha.  See what a bright red she has in her face.  You are too pale; you look as if you had just been bled.  A’n’t you well, child?”

Mrs. Wood felt the girl’s arms and shoulders, and found them thinner than her standard of health demanded.

“I am very well, thank you, but tired from my journey, and from walking all about the old place.”

“And like enough you’ve cried a deal.  Your eyes are heavy.  You know, honey, the old house burnt down one blustry night in March, and so we sold the place; for when my old man died we were hard-pressed, we were, and a man by the name of Simmons, he bought it and planted it in corn.  Edna, have you been to your Grandpa’s grave?”

“Yes, ma’am, I was there a long time to-day.”

“Oh! a’n’t it beautiful!  It would be a real comfort to die, if folks knew such lovely gravestones would cover ’em.  I think your Grandpa’s grave is the prettiest place I ever saw, and I wonder, sometimes, what Aaron Hunt would say if he could rise out of his coffin and see what is over him.  Poor thing!  You haven’t got over it yet, I see.  I thought we should have buried you, too, when he died; for never did I see a child grieve so.”

“Mrs. Wood, who keeps the walks so clean, and the evergreens so nicely cut?”