CHAPTER V—PRIDE AND A FALL.
Arthur Ripley, as I have said, meant to be a lawyer. He was full of enthusiasm for his future profession, and never tired of talking about it. In his room at home he had three or four big law-books, bound in yellow calf-skin, which he used to read for his pleasure, just as we other boys would read our story-books; and he seemed to know their contents by heart. At least, we gave him the credit for knowing them by heart. He passed among us for little less than a Solomon of legal wisdom. His opinion upon a legal question had, to our thinking, the authority of a judgment from the bench; and if one of our number had got into a legal difficulty of any sort, I am sure he would have gone to Ripley for aid and counsel as readily and as confidently as to the most eminent jurist at the bar.
This being premised, you will easily understand the impression made upon me by the following conversation which I had with Ripley one day in the early summer of 1875.
We had just passed our examinations for promotion from the Introductory to the Freshman class at college, and our consequent vacation had just begun. I was minding the shop, while Messrs. Flisch and Finkelstein smoked their cigars and played their pinochle in the back room, and Ripley was keeping me company. We had been talking about my grandmother; and presently Ripley queried: “Look here, Greg, she was a woman of some property, wasn't she? I mean to say she lived in good style, had plenty of money, was comfortable and well-to-do, hey?”
“Why, yes,” I answered, “she was pretty well-off—why, about as well as anybody in Norwich Town, I suppose. Why do you ask?”
“Because—what I should like to know is, why didn't she leave anything to you?”
“Why, how could she? I was only her grandchild. My Uncle Peter was her son. Don't you see?”
“But that doesn't make any difference. Your father being dead, you were, equally with your uncle, her legal heir and next-of-kin. And as long as she was so fond of you, it seems kind of funny she didn't provide for you in any way.”
“What do you mean by her legal heir and next-of-kin?”
“Don't you know that? Why, a legal heir and next-of-kin is a person entitled to take under the statutes of descent and distribution. For instance, if your grandmother had died intestate, you would have come in for half of all the property she left, your Uncle Peter taking the other half. See the point?”