“I wish you success with Uncle Phil,” Mr. Belknap said, as he handed Edna from the wagon and deposited her trunk upon the stoop. “Maybe I and the girls will drop in to-night and see how you get on,” he added, as he climbed over the wheel, and chirruping to his horse, drove off, leaving Edna standing by the door, whose huge brass knocker sent back a dull, heavy echo, but did not for some little time bring any answering response. CHAPTER XVIII. AT UNCLE PHIL’S. It was one of those old-fashioned farm-houses rarely found outside of New England, and even there growing more and more rare, as young generations arise with cravings for something new, and a feeling of having outgrown the old homestead with its “front entry” and crooked stairway leading to another “entry” above; its two “square rooms” in front and its huge kitchen and smaller sleeping apartment in the rear. Those who do not emigrate to some more genial atmosphere, where their progressive faculties have free scope to grow, have come to feel a contempt for the old brown houses which once dotted the New England hills so thickly; and so these veterans of a past century have gradually given way to dwellings of a more modern style, with wide halls and long balconies and bay-windows, and latterly the much-admired French roofs. But Uncle Phil Overton was neither young nor a radical, nor was there anything progressive in his taste. As his house had been forty years ago, when by his father’s death and will it came to him, so it was that day when Edna stood knocking at the door. It had been yellow then and it was yellow now; it had been void of shade-trees then and it was so now, if we except the horse-chestnut which grew near the gate, and which could throw no shadow, however small, upon the house or in the great, glaring rooms inside. Uncle Phil did not like trees, and he did like light, and held it a sin to shut out Heaven’s sunshine; so there never was a blind upon his house; and the green-paper shades and curtains of Holland linen, which somehow had been smuggled in and hung at a few of the windows, were rolled up both day and night. Uncle Phil had no secrets to shut out, he said, and folks were welcome to look in upon him at any time; so he sat before the window, and washed before it, and shaved before it, and ate before it, and dressed before it; and when his housekeeper, old Aunt Becky, remonstrated with him, as she sometimes did, and told him “folks would see him,” he answered her, “Let ’em peek, if they want to;” and so the curtains remained as they were, and the old man had his way.