“Eleven o’clock. I have decided, Abbie, to accept the guardianship and the rest of it, for a spell, anyhow. Shall notify the lawyers in the morning. Necessity is one thing, and pleasure is another. I doubt if I find the job pleasant, but I guess it is necessary. Anyhow, it looks that way to me.”
CHAPTER VIII
Announcement of Captain Elisha’s decision followed quickly. Sylvester, Kuhn, and Graves received the telephone message stating it, and the senior partner was unqualifiedly delighted. Kuhn accepted his associate’s opinion with some reservation. “It is an odd piece of business, the whole of it,” he declared. “I shall be curious to see how it works out.” As for Mr. Graves, when the information was conveyed to him by messenger, he expressed disgust and dismay. “Ridiculous!” he said. “Doctor, I simply must be up and about within the next few days. It is necessary that a sane, conservative man be at the office. Far be it from me to say a word against Sylvester, as a lawyer, but he is subject to impressions. I imagine this Cape Codder made him laugh, and, therefore, in his opinion, is all right. I’m glad I’m not a joker.”
The captain said that he would be down later on to talk things over. Meanwhile, if the “papers and such” could be gotten together, it would “sort of help along.” Sylvester explained that there were certain legal and formal ceremonies pertaining to the acceptance of the trust to be gone through with, and these must have precedence. “All right,” answered the captain. “Let’s have ’em all out at once and get the ache and agony over. I’ll see you by and by.”
When Mrs. Corcoran Dunn made her daily visit to the Warren apartment that afternoon, she found Caroline alone and almost in tears. Captain Elisha had broken the news at the table during luncheon, after which he went downtown. Stephen, having raved, protested, and made himself generally disagreeable and his sister correspondingly miserable, had departed for the club. It was a time for confidences, and the wily Mrs. Dunn realized that fact. She soothed, comforted, and within half an hour, had learned the whole story. Caroline told her all, the strange will, the disclosure concerning the country uncle, and the inexplicable clauses begging the latter to accept the executorship, the trust, and the charge of her brother and herself. Incidentally she mentioned that a possible five hundred thousand was the extreme limit of the family’s pecuniary resources.
“Now you know everything,” sobbed Caroline. “Oh, Mrs. Dunn, you won’t desert us, will you?”
The widow’s reply was a triumph, of its kind. In it were expressed sorrow, indignation, pity, and unswerving loyalty. Desert them? Desert the young people, toward whom she had come to feel almost like a mother? Never!
“You may depend on Malcolm and me, my dear,” she declared. “We are not fair-weather friends. And, after all, it is not so very bad. Affairs might be very much worse.”