No; I know she didn't, boy," said Miss Hepsy severely. "Your mother
was as useless as a bit o' Sunday china.--I hope you won't be like
her, Lucy."

"I hope she will, Aunt Hepsy," spoke up Tom again. "Mamma was
perfectly splendid, everybody said."

"You'd better go outside, boy," said Miss Hepsy wrathfully, "till you
learn to speak respectfully to your aunt. I know what your mother
was. She was my own sister, I hope."

Tom caught up his cap and fled, nothing loath; his aunt irritated
him, and made him forget himself.

"How old are you, child?" said Miss Hepsy, turning to Lucy, after a
moment's silence.

"I am fourteen past, Aunt Hepsy; Tom is twelve."

Miss Hepsy dropped her paring-knife and stared.

"Bless me, child, you don't look more'n nine, and that great boy
looks years older'n you. What have ye fed on?"

Lucy smiled faintly. "I have not been very strong this summer, Aunt
Hepsy; and I was so anxious about mamma being so poorly. I couldn't
sleep at nights, nor eat anything hardly. I suppose that's what made
me thin." Miss Hepsy sniffed.

"Have any of ye been to school?" was her next question.

"No, Aunt Hepsy. Papa taught us till he died, and then mamma kept up
our lessons as well as she could. Tom is a good scholar; and, oh,
such a beautiful painter!"

"Painter!" echoed Miss Hepsy. "What, fence rails and gates?"

Lucy looked very much shocked. "Oh no; he draws landscapes and
things, and went to the Art School as long as mamma could afford it.
Then he practised at home. He means to be a great painter some day,
like the ones he read about."

"Humph!" said Miss Hepsy contemptuously. "I guess his uncle'll find
him work in painting the farm an' the gates afresh this fall. It'll
save a man. Now then, there's them taters on. Come upstairs an' I'll
show you your room."

Lucy rose at once, and obediently followed her aunt along the wide
flagged passage and up the polished oak steps to a tiny little
chamber in the attic fiat. It was poorly furnished, but it was
scrupulously clean; and from the window Lucy's delighted eyes caught
a glimpse of the broad green meadow, the shining water of the river,
and beyond, the houses of the town nestling in the shadow of the
giant slopes of Pendle Peak.

"Your brother's room is on t'other side o' the landing," explained
Miss Hepsy; "an' I'll 'spect you to keep 'em both as clean's a new
pin. I'm mighty partickler, mind, an' can't abide untidiness. An' if
yer mother's br