Aunt Jerry had always expected Roy in the stage, and had never thought of his hiring a carriage at Canandaigua, and driving himself out; but the moment she saw him she guessed who it was, and in her surprise dropped her saucer of soap, and came near slipping down from setting her foot in it as she hurried out of sight. “The very old boy! if that ain’t Roy Leighton, and I lookin’ more like an evil spirit than a decent woman!” was her first exclamation. Then her natural disposition asserted itself, and instead of stealing into the house and effecting a change of toilet before receiving her guest, she resolved to brave it out, and make the best of it. “I’m dressed for my work,” she said, “and if he don’t like my appearance, he can look t’other way.” And holding her head very high, Aunt Jerry came round the corner of the house just as Roy was knocking, for the second time, at the open door. He saw her, and could scarcely keep his face straight, as he asked “if Miss Pepper lived there?” “Yes; I’m Miss Pepper.” And Aunt Jerry began to unroll one of her sleeves, and button it around her wrist. “Ah, yes; I am glad to see you. I am Roy Leighton,—Edna’s brother-in-law.” “Oh, you be!” Aunt Jerry answered, rather dryly; and as he had come close to her now, and her soap was near boiling over, she darted toward the lye leech, and seizing a wooden dipper poured some of the dark fluid into the boiling mass, while Roy stood looking on, wondering what she was doing, for it was his first experience with soap-making, and thinking of Macbeth’s witches: “‘Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble,’” he said, very softly, to himself, adding, in a little louder tone, as she threw in the lye: “‘Cool it with a babboon’s blood, Then the charm is firm and good.’” Aunt Jerry caught the last line, and turning upon him, ladle in hand, she said, a little proudly: “I suppose I look so like an old hag that you don’t think I know anything about what you are muttering to yourself, but I do. I held that book before the Bible when I was young, and now, “‘By the pricking of my thumbs, I know that “‘Something wicked this way comes.’” Roy laughed merrily, and offering her his hand, said to her: “Shakespeare with a vengeance; but I trust the pricking in your thumbs does not insinuate that I am the ‘wicked something’ which comes your way, for I assure you I come ‘on peaceful thoughts intent,’ but tell me, please, what you _are_ doing in that seething caldron; and if the toad, and the bat, and the Jew’s liver, are all in the poisoned broth?” Aunt Jerry looked at him a moment, to see if his ignorance were real or feigned, and then replied: “Where was you born, not to know _soft-soap_ when you see it?”