Uncle Win was too indulgent, of course. Miss Recompense said she had never known a girl to be brought up just that way, and shook her head doubtfully.
Early in the new year an event happened, or rather the tidings came to them that seemed to have a bearing on both of these points. An old sea captain one day brought a curious oaken chest, brass bound, and with three brass initials on the top. The key, which was tied up in a small leathern bag, and a letter stowed away in an enormous well-worn wallet, he delivered to "Mr. Winthrop Adams, Esq."
It contained an unfinished letter from Miss Arabella, beginning "Dear and Honored Sir," and another from the borough justice. Miss Arabella was dead. The care of her sister had worn her so much that she had dropped into a gentle decline, and knowing herself near the end had packed the chest with some table linen that belonged to the mother of Doris, some clothing, two dresses of her own, several petticoats, two pairs of satin slippers she had worn in her youth and outgrown, and six pairs of silk stockings. Doris would grow into them all presently.
Then inclosed was a bank note for one hundred pounds sterling, and much love and fond remembrances.
The other note announced the death of Miss Arabella Sophia Roulstone, aged eighty-one years and three months, and the time of her burial. Her will had been read and the bequests were being paid. Mr. Millington requested a release before a notary, and an acknowledgment of the safe arrival of the goods and the legacy, to be returned by the captain.
Mr. Adams went out with the captain and attended to the business.
Doris had a little cry over Miss Arabella. It did not seem as if she could be eighty years old. She could recall the sweet, placid face under the snowy cap, and almost hear the soft voice.
"That is quite a legacy," said Uncle Win. "Doris, can you compute it in dollars?"
We had come to have a currency of our own—"decimal" it was called, because computed by tens.
We still reckoned a good deal in pounds, shillings, and pence, but ours were not pounds sterling.