“Milksop, indeed!” retorted Persis, angrily. “She isn’t a milksop anything of the kind. She’s just as bright as you are, and much more of a lady.”
“Thank you! And what do you call yourself, pray? Oh, no doubt you consider any one is better than your own family. You’d better go and live at the Browns. You might help to wait on the boarders.” And Lisa’s nose took an angle of forty-five degrees in the direction of the ceiling.
“They won’t have to keep boarders now, will they?” inquired Mellicent.
“No, I suppose not,” Lisa acknowledged, with something like unwillingness.
“Oh, won’t they? Why? Do tell me. I am wild to know,” interposed Persis.
“Maybe you’ll not be so glad when you hear,” returned Lisa; “but I will tell you. Of course you know how grandma’s sister ran away from home and married a wild young fellow by the name of Brown, and how she died, and how he was killed during the war, and all that. Well, his people knew that grandma’s people objected to the match, which they had a right to do, for this Brown was as wild as could be.”
“He perfectly adored his wife, and he reformed when he married her. He was only wild when he was very young,” interrupted Persis, in defence.
“Well, that is neither here nor there. Anyhow, his family were furious because the Carters snubbed him, and there is no telling how he might have turned out if he had lived. At all events, his people wrote to Great-grandpa Carter and told him that both Mary Carter and her husband, Worthington Brown, were dead, and they never said a word about their having left a child, for they wanted to spite the Carters.”
“It was more that they loved the child so much they were afraid he might choose to spend his time with his mother’s people if he knew them,” put in Persis, still on the defensive.
Lisa passed over the interruption. “And so,” she went on, “they left him in ignorance. Then Great-grandfather Carter made an entirely new will, leaving all his money to Grandma Estabrook and her brother’s family, but he never signed the will; but in his first will he left the money to his three children, and in a codicil he said that if his daughter Mary left no heirs her share was to go to grandma, because he had already given his son as much as it would amount to; so grandma had her sister’s money, and now she is going to give it up to these Browns, people she never heard of till lately, for the name of Brown is such a common one that grandma never dreamed they were related to her till you fished them out.”