w meantime that the young woman's oft-cobbled shoes
covered a slender foot a lady might have envied.

"Now, Rhoda," Vesta said, almost indignantly, "why did you not ask your
wealthy uncle for some good yarn stockings?"

"Him? Why, ma'am, he's got so many pore kin, if he begin to give' em all
stockings, he'd go barefoot himself."

"Has he other nieces like you?"

"No." The girl quietly grimaced, with her brown eyes full of laughter.
"There's plenty of others, but none like Rhudy; the woods is full of
them others."

"So you are the favorite? Now, what was your uncle going to do with all
his money?"

"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said; "he was going to marry Miss Vesty with it.
That's what Misc Somers said."

The mocking-bird had been striking up once or twice in the conversation,
and now pealed his note loud:

"Vesta, she! she! she! she-ee-ee!"

A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than once already, in
her brief knowledge of this forest family, went through Vesta's veins
and nerves, and she silently remarked,

"How little a young girl knows of men around her--what satyrs are taking
her image to their arms! These people knew he loved me, when I knew not
that he ever saw me."

She addressed the niece again:

"Rhoda, did your uncle say he loved Miss Vesta?"

"No'm. He never said he luved nothing; but I heard Tom, the
mocking-bird, shout 'Vesty,' and saw a lady's picture yonder between
grandpar and grandmem, and told Misc Somers, and she says, 'Your Uncle
Meshach's in luve!' Oh, I was right glad of it, because he was so sad
and lonesome!"

The fountain of sympathy burst up again in Vesta's heart, and she felt
that there were compensations riches and station knew not of in humble
alliances like hers.

"Rhoda," she said, going to the young girl and putting her hand upon her
soft brown hair, "you have not noticed the new picture of a lady hanging
up here, have you?"

"No'm, not yet. Everything is so quare in this room sence I saw it last,
I hain't seen nothin' in it but you. Now I see the carpet, an' the
brass andirons, an' the chiney, an'--Lord sakes! is that a picture? Why,
I thought it was you."

"It is, Rhoda. I am Vesta; I am your new aunt."

The girl made one of her engaging, dimpled, silent laughs, as if by
stealth again, changed it into a silent cry by a revulsion as natural,
and rose to her feet and took Vesta in her arms.

"I'm so glad, I will cry a little," Rhoda simpered, her eyes all dewy