And with a little sigh as she thought of the yellow brocade in the chest upstairs, Miss Pepper put Tabby from her neck, and bringing out her prayer-book read the Gospel and Epistle and Collect for the day, and then kneeling by her chair said the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and a few words of her own improvising, to the effect that if she was too hard the Lord would thaw her out and make her softer, and help her somehow to make it up to Edna, and then she went to bed. Edna was hungry the next morning, and did full justice to the cold roast turkey and nicely browned potato, and when her aunt asked if she would like some cranberry jelly, she said she would, for she felt that her aunt wanted her to have it, and did not begrudge the journey to the cellar in quest of it. There was but little talk on either side, until Edna asked if the stage went out the same hour as usual, and announced her intention of going away. Then Aunt Jerry spoke her mind again, and said Edna “was a fool to go sky-larkin’ off alone, when she was welcome there, and could get plenty of scholars too, if that was what she wanted;” and she even went so far as to say “they might as well let bygones be bygones, and begin anew, and see if they couldn’t pull together a little better.” But Edna was not to be persuaded from her purpose. She did not know exactly where she was going, she said, but would let her aunt know when she was located, and if she did not succeed she might perhaps come back. “That is, if you will let me. This is all the home I have at present, you know,” she added, looking wistfully up in her aunt’s face, as if for some token that she was cared for by that undemonstrative woman, who scolded the driver for bringing in so much snow and mud when he came for Edna’s trunk, and scolded the boy who came to help him for leaving the door open, and did it all to hide what she really felt at parting with her niece. “Of course I’ll let you. I’d be a heathen to turn out my own flesh and blood,” she said, in reply to Edna’s remark, and then as the driver’s shrill “all ready” was heard, she gave her hand to Edna, who would have kissed her but for the forbidding look upon her face, and the pin between her teeth. Aunt Jerry went with her to the stage, and stood looking on until she was comfortably seated, and then, as the driver mounted to his box and gathered up his reins, she said, “Wall, good-by again,” with a tone in her voice which made Edna throw back her veil to look at her more closely. But the horses, obedient to the lash, had started forward, and Aunt Jerry was left, feeling more alone than she had ever before felt in her life.