Eunice had not fully seen the stranger, and so, when dinner was announced and Richard led her out, with Andy hovering at her side, she stood ready to be introduced, with the little speech she had been rehearsing about “I hope to see you well,” etc., trembling on the tip of her tongue. But her plans were seriously disarranged. Six months before Richard would have presented her himself, as a matter of course; but he had learned some things since then, and he tried not to see his mother’s meaning as she glanced from him to Eunice and then to Ethelyn, whose proud, dignified bearing awed and abashed even her. Eunice, however, had been made quite too much of to be wholly ignored now, and Mrs. Markham felt compelled to say, “Ethelyn, this-ah, this is-Eunice-Eunice Plympton.”

That Eunice Plympton was the hired girl Ethelyn did not for a moment dream; but that she was coarse and vulgar, like the rest of Richard’s family, she at once decided, and if she bowed at all it was not perceptible to Eunice, who mentally resolved “to go home in the morning if such a proud minx was to live there.”

Mrs. Markham saw the gathering storm, and Richard knew by the drop of her chin that Ethelyn had not made a good impression. How could she with that proud cold look, which never for an instant left her face, but rather deepened in its expression as the dinner proceeded, and one after the other Mrs. Markham and Eunice left the table in quest of something that was missing, while Andy himself, being nearest the kitchen, went to bring a pitcher of hot water for Ethelyn’s coffee, lifting the kettle with the skirt of his coat, and snapping his fingers, which were slightly burned with the scalding steam. From the position she occupied at the table Ethelyn saw the whole performance, and had it been in any other house she would have smiled at Andy’s grotesque appearance as he converted his coat skirts into a holder; but now it only sent a colder chill to her heart as she reflected that these were Richard’s people and this was Richard’s home. Sadly and vividly there arose before her visions of dear Aunt Barbara’s household, where Betty served so quietly and where, except that they were upon a smaller scale, everything was as well and properly managed as in Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s family. It was several hours since she had tasted food, but she could scarcely swallow a morsel for the terrible homesick feeling swelling in her throat. She knew the viands before her were as nicely cooked as even Aunt Barbara or Betty could have cooked them-so much she conceded to Mrs. Markham and Eunice; but had her life depended upon it she could not have eaten them and the plate which James had filled so plentifully scarcely diminished at all. She did pick a little with her fork at the white, tender turkey, and tried to drink her coffee, but the pain in her head and the pain at her heart were both too great to allow of her doing more, and Mrs. Markham and Eunice both felt a growing contempt for a dainty thing who could not eat the dinner they had been at so much pains to prepare.

Ethelyn knew their opinion of her as well as if it had been expressed in words; but they were so very far beneath her that whatsoever they might think was not of the slightest consequence. They were a vulgar, ignorant set, the whole of them, she mentally decided, as she watched their manners at table, noticing how James and John poured their coffee into their saucers, blowing it until it was cool, while Richard, feeling more freedom now that he was again under his mother’s wing, used his knife altogether, even to eating jelly with it. Ethelyn was disgusted, and once, as Richard’s well-filled knife was moving toward his mouth, she gently touched his foot with her own; but if he understood her he did not heed her, and went quietly on with his dinner. Indeed, it might be truly said of him that “Richard was himself again,” for his whole manner was that of a petted child, which, having returned to the mother who spoiled it, had cast off the restraint under which for a time it had been laboring. Richard was hungry, and would have enjoyed his dinner hugely but for the cold, silent woman beside him, who, he knew, was watching and criticising all he did; but somehow at home he did not care so much for her criticisms as when alone with her at fashionable hotels or with fashionable people. Here he was supreme, and none had ever disputed his will. Perhaps if Ethelyn had known all that was in his heart she might have changed her tactics and tried to have been more conciliatory on that first evening of her arrival at his home. But Ethelyn did not know-she only felt that she was homesick and wretched-and pleading a headache, from which she was really suffering, she asked to go to her room as soon as dinner was over.

It was very pleasant up there, for a cheerful wood fire was blazing on the hearth, and a rocking-chair drawn up before it, with a footstool which Andy had made and Melinda covered, while the bed in the little room adjoining looked so fresh, and clean, and inviting, that with a great sigh of relief, as the door closed between her and the “dreadful people below,” Ethelyn threw herself upon it, and burying her face in the soft pillows, tried to smother the sobs which, nevertheless, smote heavily upon Richard’s ear when he came in, and drove from him all thoughts of the little lecture he had been intending to give Ethelyn touching her deportment toward his folks. It would only be a fair return, he reflected, for all the Caudles he had listened to so patiently, and duly strengthened for his task by his mother’s remark to James, accidentally overheard, “Altogether too fine a lady for us. I wonder what Richard was thinking of,” he mounted the stairs resolved at least to talk with Ethie and ask her to do better.

Richard could be very stern when he tried, and the hazel of his eye was darker than usual, and the wrinkle between his eyebrows was deeper as he thus meditated harm against his offending wife. But the sight of the crushed form lying so helplessly upon the bed and crying in such a grieved, heart-sick way, drove all thoughts of discipline from his mind. He could not add one iota to her misery. She might be cold, and proud, and even rude to his family, as she unquestionably had been, but she was still Ethie, his young wife, whom he loved so dearly; and bending over her, he smoothed the silken bands of her beautiful hair and said to her softly, “What is it, darling? Anything worse than homesickness? Has anyone injured you?”

No one had injured her. On the contrary, all had met, or tried to meet her with kindness, which she had thrust back upon them. Ethelyn knew this as well as anyone, and Mrs. Markham, washing her dishes below stairs, and occasionally wiping her eyes with the corner of the check apron as she thought how all her trouble had been thrown away upon a proud, ungrateful girl, could not think less of Ethie than Ethie thought of herself, upstairs sobbing among the pillows. The family were ignorant and ill bred, as she counted ignorance and ill breeding; but they did mean to be kind to her, and she hated herself for her ingratitude in not at least seeming pleased with their endeavors to please her. Added to this was a vague remembrance of a certain look seen in Richard’s eye-a look which made her uneasy as she thought, “What if he should hate me, too?”

Richard was all Ethelyn had to cling to now. She respected, if she did not love him, and when she heard his step upon the stairs, her heart, for an instant, throbbed with dread lest he was coming to chide her as she deserved. When, then, he bent so kindly over her, and spoke to her so tenderly, all her better nature went out toward him in a sudden gush of something akin to love, and lifting her head, she laid it upon his bosom, and drawing his arm around her neck, held it there with a sense of protection, while she said: “No one has injured me; but, oh, I am so homesick, and they are all so different, and my head aches so hard.”

He knew she was homesick and it was natural that she should be; and he knew, too, that, as she said, they were “so different,” and though on this point he could not fully appreciate her feelings he was sorry for her, and he soothed her aching head, and kissed her forehead, and told her she was tired; she would feel better by and by, and get accustomed to their ways, and when, as he said this, he felt the shiver with which she repelled the assertion, he repressed his inclination to tell her that she could at least conceal her aversion to whatever was disagreeable, and kissing her again, bade her lie down and try to sleep, as that would help her sooner than anything else, unless it were a cup of sage tea, such as his mother used to make for him when his head was aching. Should he send Eunice up with a cup?

“No; oh, no,” and Ethelyn’s voice expressed the disgust she felt for the young lady with red streamers in her hair, who had stared so at her and called her husband Richard.

Ethelyn had not yet defined Eunice’s position in the family-whether it was that of cousin, or niece, or companion-and now that Richard had suggested her, she said to him:

“Who is this Eunice that seems so familiar?”

Richard hesitated a little and then replied:

“She is the girl who works for mother when we need help.”

“Not a hired girl-surely not a hired girl!” and Ethelyn opened her brown eyes wide with surprise and indignation, wondering aloud what Aunt Sophia or Aunt Barbara would say if they knew she had eaten with and been introduced to a hired girl.

Richard did not say, “Aunt Sophia or Aunt Barbara be hanged, or be-anything,” but he thought it, just as he thought Ethelyn’s ideas particular and over-nice. Eunice Plympton was a respectable, trusty girl, and he believed in doing well for those who did well for him; but that was no time to argue the point, and so he sat still and listened to Ethelyn’s complaint that Eunice had called him Richard, and would undoubtedly on the morrow address her as Ethelyn. Richard thought not, but changed his mind when, fifteen minutes later, he descended to the kitchen and heard Eunice asking Andy if he did not think “Ethelyn looked like the Methodist minister’s new wife.”

This was an offense which even Richard could not suffer to pass unrebuked, and sending Andy out on some pretext or other, he said that to Eunice Plympton which made her more careful as to what she called his wife, but he did it so kindly that she could not be offended with him, though she was strengthened in her opinion that “Miss Ethelyn was a stuck-up, an upstart, and a hateful. Supposin’ she had been waited on all her life, and brought up delicately, as Richard said, that was no reason why she need feel so big, and above speaking to a poor girl when she was introduced.” She guessed that “Eunice Plympton was fully as respectable and quite as much thought on by the neighbors, if she didn’t wear a frock coat and a man’s hat with a green feather stuck in it.”

This was the substance of Eunice’s soliloquy, as she cleaned the potatoes for the morrow’s breakfast, and laid the kindlings by the stove, ready for the morning fire. Still Eunice was not a bad-hearted girl, and when Andy, who heard her mutterings, put in a plea for Ethelyn, who he said “had never been so far away from home before, and whose head was aching enough to split,” she began to relent, and proposed, of her own accord, to take up to the great lady a foot-bath together with hot water for her head.

It was so long since Richard had been at home, and there was so much to hear of what had happened during his absence that instead of going back to Ethelyn he yielded to his mother’s wish that he should stay with her, and sitting down in his arm-chair by the blazing fire, he found it so pleasant to be flattered and caressed and deferred to again, that he was in some danger of forgetting the young wife who was thus left to the tender mercies of Andy and Eunice Plympton. Andy had caught eagerly at Eunice’s suggestion of the foot-bath, and offered to carry it up himself, while Eunice followed with her towels and basin of hot water. It never occurred to either of them to knock for admittance, and Ethelyn was obliged to endure their presence, which she did at first with a shadow on her brow; but when Andy asked so pleadingly that she try the hot water, and Eunice joined her entreaties with his, Ethelyn consented, and lay very quiet while Eunice Plympton bathed the aching head and smoothed the long, bright hair, which both she and Andy admired so much, for Andy, when he found that Ethelyn declined the foot-bath, concluded to remain a while, and sitting down before the fire, he scrutinized the form and features of his new sister, and made remarks upon the luxuriant tresses which Eunice combed so carefully.

It was something to have the homage of even such subjects as these, and Ethelyn’s heart grew softer as the pain gradually subsided beneath Eunice’s mesmeric touch, so that she answered graciously the questions propounded by her as to whether that sack, or great-coat, or whatever it was called, which she wore around her, was the very last style, how much it took to cut it, and if Miss Markham had the pattern. On being told that “Miss Markham” had not the pattern, Eunice presumed Melinda Jones could cut one, and then, while the cooled water was heating on the coals which Andy raked out upon the hearth, Eunice asked if she might just try on the “vasquine” and let Miss Markham see how she looked in it.

For a moment Ethelyn hesitated, but Eunice had been so kind, and proffered her request so timidly, that she could not well refuse, and gave a faint assent. But she was spared the trial of seeing her basquine strained over Eunice’s buxom figure by the entrance of Richard, who came to say that Melinda Jones was in the parlor below. In spite of all Tim had said about madam’s airs, and his advice that “Melinda should keep away,” that young lady had ventured upon a call, thinking her intimacy with the family would excuse any unseemly haste, and thinking, too, it may be, that possibly Mrs. Richard Markham would be glad to know there was someone in Olney more like the people to whom she had been accustomed than Mrs. Markham, senior, and her handmaid, Eunice Plympton. Melinda’s toilet had been made with direct reference to what Mrs. Ethelyn would think of it, and she was looking very well indeed in her gray dress and sack, with plain straw hat and green ribbons, which harmonized well with her high-colored cheeks. But Melinda’s pains had been for naught, just as Richard feared, when she asked if “Mrs. Markham” was too tired to see her.

Richard was glad to see Melinda, and Melinda was glad to see Richard-so glad that she gave him a hearty kiss, prefacing the act with the remark, “I can kiss you, now you are a married man.”

Richard liked the kiss, and liked Melinda’s frank, open manner, which had in it nothing Van Burenish, as he secretly termed the studied elegance of Mrs. Richard Markham’s style. Melinda was natural, and he promptly kissed her back, feeling that in doing so he was guilty of nothing wrong, for he would have done the same had Ethelyn been present. She had a terrible headache, he said, in answer to Melinda’s inquiry, and perhaps she did not feel able to come down. He would see.

The hot water and Eunice’s bathing had done Ethelyn good, and, with the exception that she was very pale, she looked bright and handsome, as she lay upon the pillows, with her loose hair forming a dark, glossy frame about her face.

“You are better, Ethie,” Richard said, bending over her, and playfully lifting her heavy hair. “Eunice has done you good. She’s not so bad, after all.”

“Eunice is well enough in her place,” was Ethelyn’s reply; and then there was a pause, while Richard wondered how he should introduce Melinda Jones.

Perhaps it was vain in him, but he really fancied that the name of Jones was distasteful to Ethelyn, just as the Van Buren name would have been more distasteful to him than it already was had he known of Frank’s love affair. And to a certain extent he was right. Ethelyn did dislike to hear of the Joneses, whom she heartily despised, and her brow grew cloudy at once when Richard said, bunglingly, and as if it were not at all what he had come up to say: “Oh, don’t you remember hearing me speak of Melinda Jones, whom I hoped you would like? She is very kind to mother-we all think a great deal of her; and though she knows it is rather soon to call, she has come in for a few minutes, and would like to see you. I should be so glad if you would go down, for it will gratify her, I know, and I really think we owe her something-she has always been so kind.”

But Ethelyn was too tired, and her head ached too hard to see visitors, she said; and besides that, “Miss Jones ought to have known that it was not proper to call so soon. None but a very intimate friend could presume upon such a thing.”

“And Melinda is an intimate friend,” Richard answered, a little warmly, as he left his wife, and went back to Melinda with the message, that “some time she should be happy to make Miss Jones’ acquaintance, but to-night she really must be excused, as she was too tired to come down.”

All this time Andy had been standing with his back to the fire, his coat-skirts taken up in his arms, his light, soft hat on his head, and his ears taking in all that was transpiring. Andy regarded his stylish sister-in-law as a very choice gem, which was not to be handled too roughly, but he was not afraid of her; he was seldom afraid of anybody, and when Richard was gone, he walked boldly up to Ethelyn and said:

“I don’t want to be meddlesome, but ’pears to me if you’d spoke out your feelings to Dick, you’d said, ’Tell Melinda Jones I don’t want to see her, neither to-night nor any time.’ Mebby I’m mistaken, but honest, do you want to see Melinda?”

There was something so straightforward in his manner that, without being the least offended, Ethelyn replied:

“No, I do not. I am sure I should not like her if she at all resembles her brother^ that terrible Timothy.”

Andy did not know that there was anything so very terrible about Tim. He liked him, because he gave him such nice chews of tobacco, and was always so ready to lend a helping hand in hog-killing time, or when a horse was sick; neither had he ever heard him called Timothy before, and the name sounded oddly, but he classed it with the fine ways of his new sister, who called him Anderson, though he so much wished she wouldn’t. It sounded as if she did not like him; but he said nothing on that subject now-he merely adhered to the Jones question, and without defending Tim, replied:

“Gals are never much like their brothers, I reckon. They are softer, and finer, and neater; leastways our Daisy was as different from us as different could be, and Melinda is different from Tim. She’s been to Camden high-school, and has got a book that she talks French out of; and didn’t you ever see that piece she wrote about Mr. Baldwin’s boy, who fell from the top of the church when it was building, and was crushed to death? It was printed, all in rhyme, in the Camden Sentinel, and Jim has a copy of it in his wallet, ’long with a lock of Melinda’s hair. I tell you she’s a team.”

Andy was warming up with his subject, and finding Ethelyn a good listener, he continued:

“I want you to like her, and I b’lieve you orter, for if it hadn’t been for her this room wouldn’t of been fixed up as ’tis. Melinda coaxed mother to buy the carpet, and the curtings, and to put your bed in there. Why, that was the meal room, where you be, and we used to keep beans there, too; but Melinda stuck to it till mother moved the chest and the bags, and then we got some paint, and me and the boys and Melinda painted, and worked, hopin’ all the time that you’d be pleased, as I guess you be. We wanted to have you like us.”

And simple-hearted Andy drew near to Ethelyn, who was softened more by what he said than she could have been by her husband’s most urgent appeal. The thought of the people to whom she had been so cold, and even rude, working and planning for her comfort, touched a very tender chord, and had Richard then proffered his request for her to go down, it is very possible she might have done so; but it was too late now, and after Andy left her she lay pondering what he had said and listening to the sound of voices which came up to her from the parlor directly beneath her room where James, and John, and Andy, and the mother, with Melinda, and Eunice, were talking to Richard, who was conscious of a greater feeling of content, sitting there in their midst again, than he had known in many a day. Melinda had been more than disappointed at Mrs. Richard’s non-appearance, for aside from a curiosity to see the great lady, there was a desire to be able to report that she seen her to other females equally curious, whom she would next day meet at church. It would have added somewhat to her self-complacency as well as importance in their eyes, could she have quoted Mrs. Richard’s sayings, and, described Mrs. Richard’s dress, the very first day after her arrival. It would look as if the intimacy, which many predicted would end with Mrs. Ethelyn’s coming, was only cemented the stronger; but no such honor was in store for her. Ethelyn declined coming down, and with a good-humored smile Melinda said she was quite excusable; and then, untying her bonnet, she laid it aside, just as she did the indescribable air of stiffness she had worn while expecting Mrs. Richard.

How merrily they all laughed and chatted together! and how handsome James’ eyes grew as they rested admiringly upon the sprightly girl, who perfectly conscious of his gaze, never looked at him, but confined her attention wholly to Richard, until Andy asked “if they could not have a bit of a tune.”

Then, for the first time, Richard discovered that Ethelyn’s piano had been unpacked, and was now standing between the south windows, directly under Daisy’s picture. It was open, too, and the sheet of music upon the rack told that it had been used. Richard did not care for himself, but he was afraid of what Ethelyn might say, and wondered greatly why she had not spoken of the liberty they had taken.

Ethelyn had not observed the piano; or if she did she had paid no attention to it. Accustomed as she had always been to seeing one in the room, she would have missed its absence more than she noticed its presence. But when, as she lay half dozing and thinking of Aunt Barbara, the old familiar air of “Money-musk,” played with a most energetic hand, came to her ear, she started, for she knew the tone of her own instrument-knew, too, that Melinda Jones’ hands were sweeping the keys-and all that Melinda Jones had done for her comfort was forgotten in the deep resentment which heated her blood and flushed her cheek as she listened to “Old Zip Coon,” which followed “Money-musk,” a shuffling sound of feet telling that somebody’s boots were keeping time after a very unorthodox fashion. Next came a song-“Old Folks at Home”-and in spite of her resentment Ethelyn found herself listening intently as James’ rich, deep bass, and John’s clear tenor, and Andy’s alto joined in the chorus with Melinda’s full soprano. The Markham boys were noted for their fine voices; and even Richard had once assisted at a public concert; but to-night he did not sing-his thoughts were too intent upon the wife upstairs and what she might be thinking of the performance, and he was glad when the piano was closed and Melinda Jones had gone.

It was later than he supposed, and the clock pointed to almost eleven when he at last said good-night to his mother and went, with a half-guilty feeling, to his room. But there were no chidings in store for him; for, wearied with her journey and soothed by the music, Ethelyn had forgotten all her cares and lay quietly sleeping, with one hand beneath her cheek and the other resting outside the white counterpane. Ethie was very pretty in her sleep, and the proud, restless look about her mouth was gone, leaving an expression more like a child’s than like a girl of twenty. And Richard, looking at her, felt supremely happy that she was his, forgetting all of the past which had been unpleasant, and thinking only that he was blessed above his fellow mortals that he could call the beautiful girl before him his Ethelyn-his wife.