The Harvest of Years | Page 5

letter from the hands of a neighbor, who came over from the
post-office and kindly brought our mail with him. We received a good
many letters for farming people, and I had kept up a perfect fire of
correspondence with Mary Snow ever since she went to the home of
her uncle, who lived some twenty miles distant, but this appeared to be
a double letter, and mother broke the seal, while we all listened to her
as she read it. It is not necessary to quote the whole of it, 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