irst opportunity of the
blue scuttle being jolted up by the mourner to discern the face within.

It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also mischievous brown
eyes, set in the attitude of wonder the moment they observed another
woman in the room. The skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long,
like Milburn's, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and form of the
face longish, and with something fine amid the wild, cow-like stare she
fixed on Vesta, exclaiming, in a whisper,

"Lord sakes! a lady's yer!"

Then she threw her apron over the Conestoga bonnet again, and held it up
there with her long fingers, and long, plump, weather-stained wrists.

Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amusement she had felt since
the morning she and her mother laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as they
looked down from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already her
husband. That morning seemed a year ago; it was but yesterday.

"Old hats and bonnets," Vesta thought, "will be no novelties to me by
and by. This family of the Milburns is full of them."

Then, addressing the new arrival, Vesta said,

"This is your uncle, then? Where do you live?"

"I live at Nu _Ark_," answered the miss, taking down the black apron and
looking from the depths of the bonnet, like a guinea-pig from his hole.

"If she had said 'the Ark' without the 'New,'" Vesta thought, "it would
have seemed natural."

"Your uncle has a high fever," Vesta said, kindly; "he is not in danger,
we think. It was right of you to come, however. Now take off your
bonnet. What is your name?"

"Rhudy--I'm Rhudy Hullin, ma'am."

"Rhoda--Rhoda Holland, I think you say."

"Yes'm, Rhudy Hullin. I live crost the Pookamuke, on the Oushin side,
out thar by Sinepuxin. I don't live in a great big town like Princess
Anne; I live in Nu Ark."

At this the girl carefully extricated her head from the Conestoga
scuttle, looked all over the bonnet with pride and anxiety, and then
carefully laid it on the top of her uncle's hat-box.

"Uncle Meshach give it to me," she said, with a sly inclination towards
the sick bed. "Misc Somers made it. Uncle, he bought all the stuff; Misc
Somers draw'd it. Did you ever see anything like it?"

"Never," said Vesta.

"Well, some folks out Sinepuxin said it was a sin and a shame--sech
extravagins; but Misc Somers she said Uncle Meshach was rich an' hadn't
but one Rhudy. It ain't quite as big as Misc Somers's bonnet, but it'