"Don't set your heart on it. I don't think he had any money."
"What did he have?"
"A little farm, and some chickens, and some books that were handed down to him from somebody else, and a pianola that he got by a mortgage, and a gold-headed cane—"
"That is it, father, of course—the gold-headed cane. I am sure of it. Of all things in the world that you can't use, and I don't want, a gold-headed cane comes first. So that is probably what you will get. I feel it in my prophetic soul. Cheer up, dear, I believe you can pawn it."
"Why, General, what a pessimist you are to-day. Maybe he left us the chickens."
"No such luck," she answered gloomily. "Didn't he have a handsome imported Italian pipe? Maybe he left you that. Or an old English drinking tankard—he must have had drinking tankards. Or a set of hand-carved poker chips— He would chuckle in his grave if he could wish something like that on you. Don't talk to me of wills any more, father. No wonder you are fidgety. Run along now, and if you get a gold-headed cane don't you bring it into the manse. And if you get a sterling beer mug, you give it to the heathens. Now scoot."
Laughing, her father scooted, and Doris smiled after him tenderly.
"It would be nice if the old sinner did end his bad life well by leaving father something really decent. And goodness knows father deserves it. He had to get him out of jail twice, and pray him through delirium tremens four times."
Still she would not allow her hopes to rise too buoyantly, for she had learned from a life of well-mixed joy and discomfort not to expect the very greatest and grandest of all good things—and then whatever came was welcome, because it was more than she expected.