The captain’s grin was as wide as Annie’s. “Oh,” he explained, “I couldn’t let ’em all go. Never intended to. That five thousand dollar codder up there seemed like own folks, pretty nigh. I’d have kept him, if we had to live in one room and a trunk. And we ain’t got to that—yet. I tell you, dearie, I thought they’d make you feel more to home. And they do, don’t they?”
The look she gave him was answer sufficient.
“But the creditors?” she asked. “That man who—they belong to him, don’t they? I supposed of course they must go with the rest.”
Captain Elisha winked. “There’s times,” he answered, “when I believe in cheatin’ my creditors. This is one of ’em. Never you mind that feller you mentioned. He’s got enough, confound him! He didn’t have the face to ask for any more. Sylvester looked out for that. Five hundred thousand, droppin’ in, as you might say, unexpected, ought to soften anybody’s heart; and I judge even that feller’s got some bowels of mercy.”
He changed the subject hastily, but Caroline asked no more questions. She never alluded to the lost estate, never expressed any regrets, nor asked to know who it was that had seized her all. The captain had expected her to ask, had been ready with the same answer he had given Stephen, but when he hinted she herself had forbade his continuing. “Don’t tell me about it,” she begged. “I don’t want to know any more. Father did wrong, but—but I know he did not mean to. He was a good, kind father to me, and I loved him. This man whose money he took had a right to it, and now it is his. He doesn’t wish us to know who he is, so Steve says, and I’m glad. I don’t want to know, because if I did I might hate him. And,” with a shudder, “I am trying so hard not to hate anybody.”
Her make-believe liking for the little home became more and more real as spring drew near. She began to take an interest in it, in the flower garden, in the beds beside the porch, where the peonies and daffodils were beginning to show green heads above the loam, and in the household affairs. And she had plans of her own, not connected with these. She broached them to her uncle, and they surprised and delighted him, although he would not give his consent to them entirely.
“You mustn’t think,” she said, “that, because I have been willing to live on your money since mine went, that I mean to continue doing it. I don’t. I’ve been thinking a great deal, and I realize that I must earn my own way just as soon as I can. I’m not fitted for anything now; but I can be and I shall. I’ve thought perhaps I might learn stenography or—or something like that. Girls do.”
He looked at her serious face and choked back his laugh.
“Why, yes,” he admitted, “they do, that’s a fact. About four hundred thousand of ’em do, and four hundred thousand more try to and then try to make business men think that they have. I heard Sylvester sputterin’ about a couple in his office t’other day; said they was no good and not worth the seven dollars a week he paid ’em.”
“Seven dollars a week!” she repeated.