“When William died, twelve years ago, I took Edna and have been a mother to her ever since, and made her learn the catechism and creed, and thoroughly indoctrinated her with my views, and sent her to Sunday-school, and always gave her something from the Christmas tree, and insisted upon her keeping all the fasts, and had her confirmed, and she turned out High Church after all, and ran away with your son. But I wash my hands of her now. Such a bill as I have got to pay the teachers in the seminary for her education! It was understood that after she graduated she was to stay there and teach to pay for her schooling, and what does she do but run away and leave me with a bill of four hundred dollars! Not that I can’t pay it, for I can. I’ve four times four hundred laid up in Mr. Beals’s bank, and like an honest woman, I took it out and paid the bill and have got the receipt in my prayer-book, and I showed it to her, for she’s been here; yes, actually had the cheek to come right into my house on Thanksgiving day, when I was at church; and a good sermon we had, too, if our new minister did bow in the creed, which rather surprised me, after telling him, as I did only the day before, that I looked upon that ceremony as a shred, at least, if not a rag of Popery. He lost a dollar by that bow, for I had twelve shillings of milk-money I calculated to give him, but when he bowed over so low right at me as if he would say, ‘You see, Miss Pepper, I’m not to be led by the nose,’ I just put on my fifty cents, and let it go at that. “The stage came in while I was at church; but I never thought of Edna till I got home and smelled the turkey I had left in the oven more than I should have smelled it if somebody hadn’t hurried up the fire; and there was the vegetables cooking, and the table set for two; and Edna, in her black dress, stood before the fire with her hands held tight together, and a look on her face as if she felt she’d no business there after all she had done. “‘Edna Browning,’ I said, ‘what are you doing here, and how dare you come after disgracing me so?’ “Then she said something about its being the only place she had to go to, and my being lonely eating dinner alone Thanksgiving day, and began to be hystericky, of course. “If there’s anything I pride myself on more than another, it’s _firmness_ and presence of mind, and I am happy to say I maintained them both, though I did come near giving way, when I saw how what I said affected her. “I told her that to get into any family the way she did into yours was mean and disgraceful, and said she was to blame for the young man’s death; and asked who was to remunerate me for that four hundred dollars I had to pay for her schooling; and who was to pay for all the trinkets at Greenough’s in Canandaigua, and if she was not ashamed to wear a wedding ring a stranger had to pay for.