And under the seamstress’s skillful questioning Ruth related every detail she knew about the Raby orphans—and Mr. Steele, in her presence, had cross-questioned Sadie exhaustively the evening before. The story lost nothing in Ruth’s telling, for she had a retentive memory.
“My goodness me, Ruthie!” ejaculated the spinster, excitedly. “It’s the same folks—sure. Why, do you know, they came from Quebec, and there’s some property they’ve fell heir to—property from their mother’s side—Oh, let me tell you! Funny you never heard us talkin’ about that Canady lawyer while you was livin’ here with me. My!”
CHAPTER XX—THE RABY ROMANCE
Miss True Pettis thrilled with the joy of telling the romance. The little seamstress had been all her life entertaining people with the dry details of unimportant neighborhood happenings. It was only once in a long while that a story like that of the Rabys’ came within her ken.
“Why, do you believe me!” she said to Ruth, “that Mis’ Raby came of quite a nice family in Quebec. Not to say Tom Raby wasn’t a fine man, for he was, but he warn’t educated much and his trade didn’t bring ’em more’n a livin’. But her folks had school teachers, and doctors, and even ministers in their family—yes, indeed!
“And it seems like, so the Canady lawyer said, that a minister in the family what was an uncle of Mis’ Raby’s, left her and her children some property. It was in what he called ‘the fun’s’—that’s like stocks an’ bonds, I reckon. But them Canadians talk different from us.
“Well, I can remember that man—tall, lean man he was, with a yaller mustache. He had traced the Rabys to Darrowtown, and he saw the minister, and Deacon Giles, and Amoskeag Lanfell, askin’ did they know where the Rabys went when they moved away from here.
“I was workin’ for Amoskeag’s wife that day, so I heard all the talk,” pursued Miss Pettis. “He said—this Canady lawyer did—that the property amounted to several thousand dollars. It was left by the minister (who had no family of his own) to his niece, Mis’ Raby, or to her children if she was dead.
“Course they asked me if I knowed what became of the family,” said the spinster, with some pride. “It bein’ well known here in Darrowtown that I’m most as good as a parish register—and why wouldn’t I be? Everybody expects me to know all the news. But if I ever did know where them Rabys went, I’d forgot, and I told the lawyer man so.
“But he give me his card and axed me to write to him if I ever heard anything further from ’em, or about ’em. And I certain sure would have done so,” declared Miss Pettis, “if it had ever come to my mind.”