"
CHAPTER IV
"He shall daily joy dispense
Hid in song's sweet influence."
EMERSON's Merlin.
Lyddy had very few callers during her first month as a property owner
in Edgewood. Her appearance would have been against her winning
friends easily in any case, even if she had not acquired the habits
of a recluse. It took a certain amount of time, too, for the
community to get used to the fact that old Mrs. Butterfield was dead,
and her niece Lyddy Ann living in the cottage on the river road.
There were numbers of people who had not yet heard that old Mrs.
Butterfield had bought the house from the Thatcher boys, and that was
fifteen years ago; but this was not strange, for, notwithstanding
Aunt Hitty's valuable services in disseminating general information,
there was a man living on the Bonny Eagle road who was surprised to
hear that Daniel Webster was dead, and complained that folks were not
so long-lived as they used to be.
Aunt Hitty thought Lyddy a Goth and a Vandal because she took down
the twenty silver coffin-plates and laid them reverently away. "Mis'
Butterfield would turn in her grave," she said, "if she could see her
niece. She ain't much of a housekeeper, I guess," she went on, as
she cut over Dr. Berry's old trousers into briefer ones for Tommy
Berry. "She gives considerable stuff to her hens that she'd a sight
better heat over and eat herself, in these hard times, when the
missionary societies can't hardly keep the heathen fed and clothed
and warmed--no, I don't mean warmed, for most o' the heathens live in
hot climates, somehow or 'nother.
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