“James Turner.”
“He’s an awful disagreeable boy,” said Katy. “He puts on all sorts of airs just because his father is rich. I wish father was as rich as Squire Turner.”
“Perhaps you’d like to have him for a father.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Katy, quickly. “He’s just as bad for a man, as James is for a boy.”
“So, you see, money isn’t everything,” said her mother.
There was a deeper meaning in these words than her children knew. There was one passage in her early life, known only to herself and her husband, with which the rich Squire Turner was connected.
As a girl, Mrs. Raymond had been very handsome, and even now, at the age of thirty-six, she retained much of her good looks. It was not generally known that Squire Turner had been an aspirant for her hand. But though he was even then rich, and could have given her an attractive home—so far as money can make a home attractive—she quietly rejected his suit, and accepted Mr. Raymond, a journeyman carpenter, with less than a hundred dollars.
This rejection Squire Turner never forgot nor forgave. He was not a forgiving man, and his resentment was bitter, though he did not choose to show it publicly. Indeed, he treated Mr. and Mrs. Raymond, to all appearance, as though nothing had happened; but none the less he nursed his anger, and waited patiently for an opportunity to repay, by some grievous injury, the wrong which he fancied he had suffered. About the same time with Mr. Raymond, Squire Turner also married a Miss Ellis, a sharp-tempered spinster from a neighboring town, whose only redeeming point was the possession of ten thousand dollars in her own right. Her husband cared nothing for her, but only for her money, and the marriage was far from being a happy one. Domestic dissension, and almost continual wrangling, were what James had witnessed from his babyhood up to the time of his mother’s death, a year previous; and perhaps it is not surprising that the son of such parents should have been unpopular, and possessed of disagreeable traits.
Yet Mr. Raymond had applied to Squire Turner for money to assist him in building his house. The squire had two objects in granting this request. First, the security was ample, and the investment a good one; and, secondly, a debtor is always to some extent in the power of his creditor. Squire Turner was by no means averse to establishing this power over the husband of the woman who had rejected his suit. The time might come when he could make a use of it.