“Once,” said I, musingly, “father told me how he had brought you here to save you from the poor-house, or starvation. He was sorry for you, and gave you a home. That was while mother was living. Afterwards, he said, he trusted to your gratitude to take good care of me, and to stand my friend in place of my dead mother.”
“Fiddlesticks!” she snapped, again. It was the word she usually used to express contempt, and it sounded very disagreeable coming from her lips.
“The Cap’n must ’a’ been a-dreamin’ when he told you that stuff an’ nonsense,” she went on. “I’ve treated ye like my own son; there’s no mistake about that. But I did it for wages, accordin’ to agreement atween me an’ the Cap’n. An’ the wages wasn’t never paid. When they got to be a big lump, he put the house in my name, to secure me. An’ it’s mine—ev’ry stick of it!”
My head was aching, and I had to press my hand to it to ease the pain. In the light of the one flickering candle Mrs. Ranck’s hard face assumed the expression of a triumphant demon, and I drew back from it, shocked and repelled.
“If what you say is true,” I said, listlessly, “I would rather you take the old home to wipe out the debt. Yet father surely told me it was mine, and it isn’t like him to deceive me, or to owe any one money. However, take it, Aunt, if you like.”
“I’ve got it,” she answered; “an’ I mean to keep it.”
“I shall get along very well,” said I, thinking, indeed, that nothing mattered much, now father was gone.
“How will you live?” she enquired.
“Why, there’s plenty besides the house,” I replied. “In father’s room,” and I nodded my head toward the door that was always kept locked in the Captain’s absence, “there must be a great many valuable things stored. The very last time he was home he said that in case anything ever happened to him I would find a little fortune in his old sea-chest, alone.”
“May be,” rejoined the old woman, uneasily. “I hope that story o’ his’n, at least, is true, for your sake, Sam. I hain’t anything agin you; but right is right. An’ the house don’t cover all that’s comin’ to me, either. The Cap’n owed me four hundred dollars, besides the house, for your keep durin’ all these years; an’ that’ll have to be paid afore you can honestly lay claim to a cent o’ his property.”