"I should think not, indeed. We don't begin to spend half as much as he did, and now he comes upon us to support his child."
"It don't seem right," said Pelatiah.
"Right? It's outrageous!" exclaimed Mrs. Kavanagh, energetically. "I declare I have no patience with such a man. It would only be right to send this boy Frank to the poor-house."
"The neighbors would talk," protested Pelatiah, who was half inclined to accept his wife's view, but was more sensitive to the criticism of the community in which he lived.
"Let 'em talk!" said his more independent helpmate. "It isn't right that this boy should use up the property that we have scraped together for his cousin Jonathan."
"We must keep him for a while, Hannah; but I'll get rid of him as soon I can consistently."
With this Mrs. Kavanagh had to be satisfied; but, during her nephew's stay of two months in the farm-house, she contrived to make him uncomfortable by harsh criticisms of his dead father, whom he had tenderly loved.
"You must have lived very extravagant," she said, "or your father would have left a handsome property."
"I don't think we did, Aunt Hannah."
"You father kept a carriage,—didn't he?"