The short wintry afternoon was drawing to a close by the time Uncle Phil’s nap was over. He had slept heavily and snored loudly, and the last snore awoke him. Starting up, he exclaimed: “What’s that? Yes, yes; snored, did I? Shouldn’t wonder if I got into a doze. Ho, you, Beck!” His call was obeyed at once by the colored woman, who came and stood deferentially before him. “I say, Beck, I’m ’bout used up, what with eatin’ such an all-fired dinner on top of jouncing along on Bobtail,—might as well ride a Virginia fence and done with it. Can’t you do the chores? Bobtail is fed, and the cows too.” Becky signified her readiness to do anything her master liked, and after bringing a tall tallow candle and adding a stick to the fire, she departed, leaving Edna alone with Uncle Phil, who was wide-awake now, and evidently disposed to talk. “Now tell me all about it,” he said, suddenly facing toward Edna. “Tell me who you are in black for, and what sent you here, and what you want, and how you happened to know of me, when I never heard of you; but first, what is your name? I’ll be hanged if I’ve thought to inquire.” “Edna Louise Browning was my name until I was married.” “Married! Thunder!” and springing from his chair, Uncle Phil took the candle, and bringing it close to Edna’s face, scrutinized it closely. “You married? Why, you’re nothing but a child. Married? Where was your folks, to let you do such a silly thing? and where is he?” “My husband is dead, was killed the very day we were married,—killed in the cars,—and I have no folks, no home, no friends, unless you will be one to me,” Edna replied, in a choking voice which finally broke down in a storm of tears and sobs. Uncle Phil did not like to see a woman cry, especially a young, pretty woman like the one before him, but he did not know at all what to say: so he took three pinches of snuff, one after the other, sneezing as many times, blew his nose vigorously, and then going to the door which led into the kitchen, called out: “Ho, Beck! come here,—I want you.” But Beck was watering old Bobtail, and did not hear him, so he returned to his seat by the fire; and as Edna’s tears were dried by that time, he asked her to go on and tell him her story. Edna had determined to keep nothing back, and she commenced with the house by the graveyard, and the aunt, who perhaps meant to be kind, but who did not understand children, and made her life less happy than it might otherwise have been; then she passed on to Canandaigua and Charlie Churchill; and while telling of him and his friends, and where they lived, she thought once Uncle Phil was asleep, he sat so still, with his eyes shut, and one fat leg crossed over the other, and a pinch of snuff held tightly between his thumb and finger. But he was not asleep, and when she mentioned Leighton Place, he started up again and went out to Becky, who by this time was moving in the kitchen.