Having been so agreeably disappointed in Content, she was prepared to welcome the little Pickels with greater cordiality; and she formed a project, then and there, that the family should make one united effort to reconstruct poor Melville, and make him a credit to them.
So, taking little Fritz from his uncle’s arms, she led the party into the south room, where through the open windows the moonlight fell as she fancied it could fall only on Deer Hill, and there she told them Melville’s short and painful history.
Ellison Capers had brought distress upon the family hearth from the first time his shadow rested there. She entered into few details, thinking it unwise that listeners so youthful should yet learn them; but she showed them that her sister Harriet had died none too soon to hide her broken heart, and that through the curse of his own father’s dissipation had come poor Melville’s ruined, crippled life. Whether he had fallen or been thrown from his father’s arms, when that father was intoxicated, they never knew; but they did know that from that fall dated all the son’s suffering. There was something wrong with the spine, but a trouble which as yet no physician had ever been able to set right.
Unconsciously to herself, as she talked, Aunt Ruth’s voice took on a tone of soft and womanly pity, and it did not seem to those who listened as if she could ever have spoken of her nephew so contemptuously as they had heard her speak a little while before.
“Well, this other ‘Grandmother Capers?’ Cannot she do anything to make him bear his trouble better?” asked Uncle Fritz.
“If she can, she does not. Ellison was her only son, and of course our invalid is her only grandchild. Her idea of love appears to be unlimited indulgence—”
Here poor “Fritzy Nunky” began to glance about uneasily, but Ruth’s next words showed him that nothing personal had been intended.
“Oh! I wasn’t thinking of thee, sir. I fancy that thee can say no—once in a way, if need be. But Mrs. Capers cannot. She is, unfortunately, very wealthy, and she has let Melville know that all she has will one day be his. That he may not live to inherit appears never to occur to either of them. The boy is utterly spoiled; and if he were any older I should give him up as hopeless. But he is only fourteen, and very clever-witted,—though it might not seem probable to those who hear him bray so!”
A renewed sound of woe or wrath warned them that Grandmother Capers was in for a tussle with her charge.
“Ruth! Ruth!”