“O, Gregory Brace! Oh! shame on you. Oh! I don't know you. I can't believe it's you. I can't believe it's the same boy at all. Such selfishness! Such ingratitude! Such a proud hard heart! It's been as much as anyone could do to put up with you for ever and ever so long, you've been so vain and so conceited and everything; but this just caps the climax. Oh! think of poor Mr. Finkelstein. He's been so good and generous to you, and so fond of you; and he's sent you to school and college, and given you every advantage he possibly could; and you owe him so much, and you're under such great obligations to him, for he took you right out of the streets, and gave you a home, and made a son of you, instead of a servant—yes, he did—and now the very first thing that you propose to do, as soon as you're able to, is to leave him, to abandon him—oh! you ungrateful thing—and go to your horrid old French uncle, who, I don't believe cares the snap of his finger for you. He is horrid, too; and I hope he'll just treat you horribly, just to punish you. And I hope that Arthur Ripley is mistaken, and that you won't get a single penny from your Uncle Peter, but just a good whipping to take you down; and I hope you'll have to come back to Mr. Finkelstein, and humbly beg his pardon; yes, I do, with all my heart and soul. I'd just like to see you have to come down from your high horse and eat humble pie for a while; yes, I would. The idea! Desert Mr. Finkelstein! You, who might have been begging in the streets, except for him! I should think you'd be ashamed to look me in the face. Oh! you mean to give him a good round sum of money, do you, to pay him for what he's done for you? Why, how very liberal and noble you are, to be sure! As though money could pay for what Mr. Finkelstein has done for you! As though money were what he wants from you, and not love and affection! O, Gregory! you've changed so that I don't know you, and I don't like you at all any more, and I don't care to be friends with you any more, and you needn't come to see me any more. There!”
Yes, I felt very sore and very angry. What Rosalind said only served to exasperate and embitter me, and to make me grit my teeth, and pursue all the more doggedly my own selfish purpose.
Well, on Monday night, according to our agreement, Ripley and I set out for Norwich, passengers aboard the very same steamboat, the City of Lawrence, that I had come to New York by, three years before; and bright and early Tuesday morning we reached our destination.
I only wish I could spare a page to tell you something of the emotions that I felt as we came in sight of the dingy old town. It had not changed the least bit in the world; it was like the face of an old familiar friend; it called up before me my own self of former years; it brought a thousand memories surging upon me, and filled my heart with a strong, unutterable melancholy, that was yet somehow indescribably sweet and tender.
But Ripley and I had no time for the indulgence of sentiment. “Now, then, where's the Court House? Where's the Probate Office?” he demanded as soon as we had set foot upon the dry land. “We must pitch right in, without losing a moment.”
So I led him to the Probate Court; and there he “pitched right in” with a vengeance, examining the indices to lots of big written books of records, while I stood by to hand them to him, and to put them back in their places when he had finished with them—until, after an hour or so, he announced, “Well, Greg, you're right. She left no will.”
Then he continued: “Now we must find out the date upon which Peter took out his Letters of Administration, and also whether he had himself constituted your guardian, as he most likely did; and then we'll have all the facts we need to establish your claims, and put you in possession.”