lain for
years. Several dispositions the good old lady had mentally made of this
property, sometimes dividing it equally between Helen and Katy,
sometimes willing it all to the former, and again, when she thought of
Mark Ray, leaving the interest of it to some missionary society in which
she was greatly interested.

How then was the poor woman amazed and confounded when suddenly there
appeared a claimant to her property; not the whole, but a part, and that
part taking in the big sweet apple tree and the very best of the berry
bushes, leaving her nothing but rocks and bogs, a pucker cherry tree, a
patch of tansy, and one small tree, whose gnarly apples were not fit,
she said, to feed the pigs.

Of course she was indignant, and all the more so because the claimant
was prepared to prove that the line fence was not where it should be,
but ran into his own dominions for the width of two or three rods, a
fact he had just discovered by looking over a bundle of deeds, in which
the boundaries of his own farm were clearly defined.

In her distress Aunt Betsy's first thoughts were turned to Wilford as
the man who could redress her wrongs if any one, and a long letter was
written to him in which her grievances were told in detail and his
advice solicited. Commencing with "My dear Wilford," closing with
"Your respected ant," sealed with a wafer, stamped with her thimble,
and directed bottom side up, it nevertheless found its way to
No. ---- Broadway, and into Wilford's hands. But with a frown and pish of
contempt he tossed it into the grate, and vain were all Aunt Betsy's
inquiries as to whether there was any letter for her when Uncle Ephraim
came home from the office. Letters there were from Helen, and sometimes
one from Katy, but none from Wilford, none for her, and her days were
passed in great perplexity and distress, until another idea took
possession of her mind. She would go to New York herself! She had never
traveled over half a dozen miles in the cars, it was true, but it was
time she had, and now that she had a new bonnet and shawl, as good as
anybody's, she could go to York as well as not!

Wholly useless were the expostulations of the family, for she would not
listen to them, nor believe that she would not be welcome at that house
on Madison Square, to which even Mrs. Lennox had never been invited
since Katy was fairly settled in it. Much at first had been said of her
coming, and of the room she was to occupy; but a