uncle Dalton, and, to my great surprise, he at once consented, and told Sophia that I was to be made ready. I could not understand, nor could Sophia then, why he was so willing, indeed so anxious, to have me go, for I was strong, well grown, and of use about the house, and also his only daughter.
CHAPTER II.
My aunt Dalton and my mother had been sisters, yet their lives had been far apart. They were both beautiful, but my mother married my father, and my aunt a summer visitor who took her home, educated her, loved and prized her, and finally deeply mourned for her. He had asked my father more than once to send me to him, so that I could go to school, for I was named for his wife, but my father refused, and bitterly, because he resented that they were rich and we poor. The fact that my uncle had no soul and so no share in the coming Paradise ought to have consoled him, but it did not. There were few preparations to be made for my journey, a new gown or two, boots, and gloves were all got on our bill at the village store, and it seemed marvellous to me that my bureau-drawer should hold in it so much that was new and my own. The ready money for the travelling expenses was more difficult, and only to be had after a funeral. So I had to wait until some one was called away or fell asleep, and I grieve to say that when Mr. McMasters grew ill I could not sorrow as I should have done for so intimate a friend of the family. I knew that Sophia shared my feeling, although she said not a word except that he was difficult to please, and too fond of rich food. Yet it was not for him that my father made at last a short broad box of the best walnut, but for Mrs. Longstreet. As Bettie lay on her bed, refusing to be comforted, I sat by her, feeling like a traitor, knowing that I was to have the money she was to pay in her grief. And I reproached myself because I wondered how soon she would pay it, and when she told me to tell my father to line the coffin with silk, I did not carry the message, because all the extras were also to be mine. I had better have done so and saved Bettie's feelings when she found that there was flannel instead.
As my father worked on the coffin he gently whistled, and at this sign of content I wondered. Mrs. Longstreet had long been a neighbor, being kind and pleasant to us all, and Bettie had come in and out as though she had been my older sister, so it seemed to me that my father should have grieved. He willingly, however, agreed with me that Bettie should take her time in paving the bill, and that I was to wait until she did. In this way it happened that Mr. McMasters had time to recover, and to come to our house the day I left, eat his dinner, and go to the stage-coach with me.
Perhaps it was well that he did so, for between my dread of a lonely journey, my grief at leaving the baby, and Bettie's loud lamentations, I think I might have broken down and refused to go, had he not, at the most critical moment, kissed me good-by. This made me furious, and I jumped into the stage without another word, and in a moment we
