The Harvest of Years | Page 5

but the gist of the matter was this: A distant cousin of father's who had never seen any of us, nor any member of the family to which her mother and my father belonged, had settled in the city of ----, about thirty miles from our little village. Her husband dying shortly afterward, she was left a widow with one child, a son. In some unaccountable way she had heard of father, and she now wrote telling us that she proposed to come to see us the very next day, only two days before Hal was to leave us. She went on to say that she hoped her visit would not be an intrusion, but she wanted to see us, and if we could only accommodate her during the summer she would be so glad to stay, and would be willing to remunerate us doubly. Mother said simply, "Well, she must come." Father looked at her and said nothing, while I flew at the supper dishes attacking them so ferociously that I should have broken them all, I guess, had not mother said gently,
"Let me wash them, Emily, your hands tremble so." Then I tried to exorcise the demon within, and I said:
"How can we have a stranger here, putting on airs, and Hal going away, and our home probably too homely for her. I know she never washed her hands in a blue wash-bowl in the world, much less in a pewter basin such as we use. She'll want everything we haven't got, and I shall tip everything over, and be as awkward as--oh, dear! Mother, how I do wish I could be ground over and put in good shape before to-morrow night." I never saw my mother laugh so heartily in my life; she laughed till I was fairly frightened and thought she had a hysteric fit, and when she could speak, said:
"Emily, don't borrow trouble, it may make Hal's departure easier for us. It must be right for her to come, else it would not have happened. You are growing so like a careful woman, I doubt not you will be the very one to please her."
Those words were a sort of strengthening cordial, and before I went to sleep I had firmly determined to receive my cousin as I would one of my neighbors, and not allow my spirit to chafe itself against the wall of conditions, whatever they might be.
So when the stage came over the hill, and round the turn in the road leading to our house, I stood quietly with mother in the doorway waiting to give the strange guest welcome in our midst. I was the first to take her hand, for the blundering stage-driver nearly let her fall to the ground, her foot missing the step as she clambered over the side of the old stage. She gave me such a warm smile of recognition, and a moment after turned to us all and said, "My name is Clara Estelle Desmonde, call me Clara,"--and with hearty hand-shaking passed into the house as one of us. Her hat and traveling mantle laid aside, she was soon seated at the table with us, and chatting merrily, praising every dish before her, and since her appetite did justice to her words, we did not feel her praise as flattery. I had made some of my snow cake, and it was the best, I think, I ever made. Mother had cream biscuit, blackberry jelly, some cold fowl, and, to tempt the appetite of our city visitor, a few of the old speckled hen's finest and freshest eggs, dropped on toast. She did not slight any of our cooking, and my cake was particularly praised. When mother told her I made it, the little lady looked at me so brightly as she said, "You must keep plenty of it on hand as long as I stay, I am especially fond of cake and pie," and although I well knew her dainty fingers had never been immersed in pie-crust, still she had made herself acquainted with the modus operandi of various culinary productions and talked as easily with us about them as if she were a real cook. She seemed from the first to take a great liking to Hal, and, seated in our family circle, this first night of our acquaintance, expressed great regret at his early departure, and remarked several times during the evening, that it would have been so nice if Halbert and her son Louis Robert could have been companions here in "Cosy Nook," as she called our house. It seemed anything but a nook to me, situated as it was on high ground, while about us on either side, lay the seventy-five acres which was my father's inheritance, when he attained his