Feeling intuitively that it would be better for Aunt Becky to announce her presence, Edna made some excuse for stealing upstairs, where from the window she had her first view of Uncle Phil, as he rode into the yard and round to the barn on Bobtail’s back. He was a short, fat man, arrayed in a home-made suit of gray, with his trouser legs tucked in his boots, and his round, rosy face protected by lappets of sheepskin attached to his cap and tied under his chin. Taken as a whole, there was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance, and nothing especially repellent either, but Edna felt herself shaking from head to foot as she watched him dismounting from Bobtail, the old fat sorrel horse, who rubbed his nose against his master’s arm as if there was perfect sympathy between them. Edna saw this action, and saw Uncle Phil, as he gently stroked his brute friend, to whom he seemed to be talking as he led him into the barn. “He is kind to his horse, anyway. Maybe he will be kind to me,” Edna thought, and then she waited breathlessly until she heard the heavy boots, first in the back room, then in the kitchen, and then in the south room, where Becky was giving a few last touches to the table. The chamber door was slightly ajar, and as Uncle Phil’s voice was loud, Edna heard him distinctly, as he said: “Hallo, Beck, what’s all this highfallutin for. What’s up? Who’s come,—Maude?” Becky’s reply was inaudible, but Uncle Phil’s rejoinder was distinct and clear: “Umph! A poor relation, hey? Where is she? Where have you put her?” Becky was now in the kitchen, and Edna heard her say: “In the back chamber, in course, till I know yer mind.” “All right. Now hurry up your victuals and trot her out. I’m hungry as a bear.” After overhearing this scrap of conversation, it is not strange if Edna shrank from being “trotted out,” but, obedient to Aunt Becky’s call, she went downstairs and into the south room, where with his back to the fire, and his short gray coat-skirts pulled up over his hands, stood Uncle Phil. He did not look altogether delighted, and his little round twinkling eyes were turned upon Edna with a curious rather than a pleased expression as she came slowly in. But when she stood before him and he saw her face distinctly, Edna could not help feeling that a sudden change passed over him: his eyes put on a softer look, and his whole face seemed suddenly to light up as he took her offered hand. “Becky tells me you are my kin, grand-niece, or grandaunt, or grandmother. I’ll be hanged if she made it out very clear. Maybe you can explain what you are to me?” He held her hand tightly in his own, and kept looking at her with an earnest, searching gaze, before which Edna dropped her eyes, as she replied: “I can claim no nearer relationship than your grand-niece. My mother was Lucy Fuller.” “Who married the parson and died from starvation?” Uncle Phil rejoined. And with a heightened color, Edna answered quickly: