“It’s jest as I say, an’ you can depend on’t,” insisted Grandma Brown. “I ain’t missed a funeral in these parts—not for forty-six years—that time I was bedfast, you recollect, Grampa? and old Deacon Hewitt went and turned up his toes. Furthermore, there ain’t ben a will made in Laurel all these years that I couldn’t tell ye the heft on’t.
“Deacon Spellman, he left that house an’ money in bank to his two darters, Lucy an’ Sophi’, an’ whichever one of ’em was to die fust the hull went to the survivor. You’ll find out it’s so; an’ everything belongs to Sophi’ Spellman now, onless Lucy an’ her husband had contrived to save suthin’ out of his pay, which wasn’t no great, it stands to reason, him bein’ not only a minister but a missionary to the heathen.”
“I don’t know but you’re right, mother,” the Doctor admitted, taking his pipe out of his mouth and resting his grizzled head on the worn leather cushions of his chair, with a tired sigh. “I do kind of hope, all the same, that some sort of provision will be made for that child to finish her schooling. I should hate to see her packed off to the Indian reservation now, when her heart’s set on graduating; and Stella deserves to graduate if ever a girl did.”
“Of course I’m right, Ezry,” observed Grandma, crisply. “And packed off she’ll be in short order, or I miss my guess.”
“It seems to me Sophia will want to do what’s right by her only sister’s adopted child,” was Mrs. Brown’s gentle suggestion, while Doris cried quietly, with her head buried in the sofa pillow.
“Seems to me, Emmeline,” Grandma countered, briskly, “you’d orter know Sophi’ Spellman better by this time. She’s her granther Spellman over again; anybody outside the family connection was allers the dirt under his feet, in a manner of speakin’. Stella’s a good gal, an’ a smart gal, but she’s no kin to Sophi’ that I know of. An’ furthermore, she ain’t even white folks, an’ no Spellman by birth and nater could put up with that—not if she had the parts of an angel. Jest you wait an’ see.”
And, as usual, Grandma had the last word.