"Who's that you know very little of--Grey Jerrold?" Mrs. Browne chimed in. "Well, I call that droll. Have you forgot how often he used to come home from school with you, and how he fished you out of the pond that time you fell in? Why, he was that free at our house, that he used always to ask for something to eat, and would often add on, 'something baked to day.' You see, he didn't like dry victuals, such as his Aunt Hannah gave him. She is tight as the bark of a tree, and queer too, with it all."
It grated on Bessie's nerves to hear Mrs. Browne speak of Grey as if she were his equal, and recognized as such at home, and she was glad when Augusta said, quietly: "But, mother, I was a little girl then, six or seven years old, and Grey felt at home at our house because--"
She did not finish the sentence, as she had evidently struck against a reef which her mother overleaped by saying: "Yes, I know, Grey was always a nice boy, and not one bit stuck up like his proud mother. I hate Geraldine Grey; yes, I do!" and Mrs. Browne manifested the first sign of unamiability which Daisy had ever seen in her. But Daisy, who remembered perfectly the haughty woman she had met at Penrhyn Park years before, hated her, too, and so there was accord between her and her guest.
"Mr. Jerrold told me of his aunt who lives in the pasture, and whom he loves very much. Do you know her?" Bessie asked, and Mrs. Browne replied: "Yes; that's his Aunt Hanner, the one I told you was so tight. She is an old maid, and queer, too; lives all alone, and saves and lays up every cent. I believe she wears the same black gown now for best which she wore thirteen years ago to her father's funeral. He was a queer one too; crazy, some said, and I guess 'twas true. He took a fancy to stay in one room all the time and would not let anybody in but Hanner, and now he is dead she keeps that room shet up and locked, some say. I was at the funeral, and Grey, who was a boy, took on awful, and hung over the coffin ever so long. He was sick with fever after it, and everybody thought he'd die. He was crazy as a loon. I watched with him one night and he talked every thing you could think of, about a grave hid away somewhere--under his bed, he seemed to think--and made me go down on all fours to look for it. I suppose he was thinking of his grandfather so lately buried. And then, he kept talking about Bessie and asking why she did not come."