"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; "oh, how Misc Somers will say, 'I found it out first!'"

Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as if he had his own thoughts:

"Sweety! sweety! sweet! Vesty, see! see! see!"

Vesta felt a chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, which she expressed as frankly as the girl of forest product had spoken, that she might not retard the welcome of these homely friendships:

"Yes, Rhoda, I am thankful to find a social life open to me where there seemed no way, and brooks and playmates where everything looked dry. You come here like a sunbeam, God bless you! I can hear you talk, and teach you what little I know, and we will relieve each other, watching him."