''Owever, it ain't for me to say,' said 'Uncle John,' 'owe no man nothing is my motter and always 'as been, and it ain't always that I could give the wife a silk dress for the afternoon, is it, Sarah?'
Sarah, with ready tact, changed the conversation by offering us tea, and observed that John was always 'a bit free with his tongue.'
'Oh, no offence intended, I'm sure,' said 'Uncle John,' but the dear soul has it firmly fixed in his mind that we are rather poor, and he keeps assuring me that he will keep expenses down as much as possible. He will begin the work on Friday, with the owner's consent, although the deeds will not be actually signed by then. I hope we shall be in 'Our House' by the middle of March.
When we returned from calling on 'Uncle John' I found a letter asking me to go to Staple Inn this week to sign some deeds. But why should they want me to do that when Ross has Michael's Power of Attorney? I asked my brother if he knew, but he professed the most profound ignorance of everything in heaven and earth, except the evening paper (which was private).
So I had to possess my soul in patience all night, and this morning when we got to the lawyer's office I discovered two conspiracies.
Fancy! Michael has given me the cottage. Isn't it too sweet of him? I was quite overcome when the lawyer said that the deeds were to be in my name. I have never had anything of my own like that before, except £2 a year paid quarterly, that an old cousin left me.
When the lawyer had congratulated me on my elevation to the position of a landed proprietor, he said, 'And now, my dear young lady, I have another piece of news which will, I think, make you an even more radiant vision than you are at the moment.'
'Oh, lor!' Ross whispered, 'that's another 13/4 for poor old Michael; the larger the lie, Meg, the bigger the bill!'
And then the lawyer told me that all the family silver and the old furniture had been stored all these years by daddy's orders for me if I cared to have them.
My brother and I were so excited that we could hardly stop to say 'good-bye' to our legal adviser, but tumbled head-first downstairs and into a taxi. Ross exhorted the Jehu to drive furiously to the Furniture Depository, where I found all my treasures, all the things that in the old days made home, that had acquired a special value from their association quite apart from their intrinsic worth. I sat in the chair of the nine devils and cried for the days when mother used the things, wept because daddy had been so thoughtful, and because I badly wanted to hear him say the old joke I loved as a kiddie, 'Oh, can't you see the ninth devil? I can!'