"
"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.
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