“Read his letter, mother. Let us hear what the fifty dollars are for. Perhaps he wants you to lay it out for him.”
Mrs. Gordon began to read:
“My Dear Niece: It is so long since you have heard from me, that you may have forgotten you had an uncle Simon. I never cared for letter writing—thought, from time to time, I have wished that I could hear something of you and how you were prospering. It is only with difficulty I have learned your address and gleaned a little knowledge of you.
“The way it happened was this: I met, last week, a peddler who had been traveling in your neighborhood. He had visited Hamilton, and I found he knew something about you. He told me that you were poor, and that your good husband was dead, but that you were blessed in having a fine boy to be a help and comfort to you.”
Andy blushed when his mother read these words, and looked rather uncomfortable, as modest boys generally do when they hear themselves praised.
“As for me,” the letter proceeded, “I am getting to be an old man. I am seventy-five years old, and, though my health is good and our family is long-lived—my father lived to be eighty-four—I feel that I have not long to live. I have had the good fortune to accumulate considerable property, besides the farm upon which I am living; but in spite of this, I find myself in a very uncomfortable position. I must explain to you how this happens.
“I had an only daughter—Sarah—who was everything that a daughter should be. She was amiable and kind, and, if she were living, I should have no cause to complain.
“She married a man named Brackett, a painter by trade, and for a few years they lived in a small house in the village. But Brackett was a lazy and shiftless man, and every year I had to help him, till at last I thought it would be cheaper taking him into my house and letting him help me look after the farm. My wife had died and I was willing to tolerate him—though I never liked the man—for the sake of my daughter’s presence in the house. Five years afterward, Sarah died, but Brackett still remained. They had had no child that lived, and I should have liked then to have gotten rid of him, but it wasn’t easy.
“Two years later he married a sharp, ill-tempered woman, from the next town, and brought her to the house. That was ten years ago. I ought to have given him notice to quit, but at the time of the marriage I was sick, and when I got well the new wife seemed to have become the mistress of the establishment.
“I have never been comfortable since. There are four children by this marriage, and they overrun the house. I was weak enough, a few years ago, to make over the place to Brackett, and now he and his wife are persecuting me to make a will, bequeathing them the rest of my property. This I will never do. The man has no claim upon me, and I should not have given him the place. My other property amounts to about ten thousand dollars, though he doesn’t suspect it. I find myself watched, as a cat watches a mouse, lest I should dispose of my property away from them. I feel that I have not a friend in the house, and I am so old that I want one.