“You may write to him when I am dead. He can have little Eva if he wishes.” But the father and mother, loath to part with all that was left of their bonny Nell, never wrote. They resented the coldness that had kept the husband from following his wife and suing for a reconciliation. They kept the child for their own. “We will bring her up with Fred’s little orphans, and her cold, proud kin in New York need never be troubled with poor Nell’s child,” they said, and devoted themselves to their grandchildren. But when Terry was eighteen, the twins sixteen, and Eva barely fourteen, dear old grandma died of a fever. Then Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, a distant cousin, rising forty, and “homely as sin,” came to reign over the farm, substituting an iron sway for the loving rule of the one who was gone. As she soon announced frankly to the neighbors, she “never took to Eva Somerville.” All natures like Miss Ruttencutter’s must have a scapegoat. The youngest girl served the spinster in that capacity. At the time of the opening of this story the twins were nineteen years old, handsome brunettes both of them, and Eva seventeen, a radiant young beauty of medium height, exquisite form, and combining her mother’s starry dark eyes with the golden locks of her Northern father, forming that fascinating type of loveliness, a dark-eyed blonde. All four of the young women were invited to go on a Hallowe’en hay ride, but, as usual, Miss Tabby tabooed Eva’s going. “She must stay at home with Gran’ther Groves. He might take one o’ them fits he’s subject to, and die if he was left alone,” she said bluntly. Eva’s starry dark eyes suddenly brimmed over with rebellious tears, and she protested with tremulous red lips: “I think you might stay with gran’ther yourself, to-night, Cousin Tab, and let me go and have some fun.” “And who pays you for thinking about what I ought to do, Miss Smarty? Ain’t I one o’ the chappyrones, and in a manner ’bleeged to go?” was the tart rejoinder. “There’s a-plenty chaperones without you, Cousin Tab. Indeed, I never could see why all the frisky widows and cranky old maids in the country must go poking along with every little frolic the young folks have, as if one settled old woman wasn’t enough to keep them straight! I believe the hateful old things go just to have a good time themselves, thinking to cut the girls out and get a young husband!” ejaculated Eva angrily, in her disappointment, so that Gran’ther Groves, from his corner seat, where he was patting the big dog’s head between his knees, looked around and chuckled: “Good for you, Eva, my honey; you hit the nail square on the head! I’m thinking, too, that the boys and girls could be trusted together without so many old women to keep ’em from sparking; eh, Pat and Lydia?”