“Is there anything you could do about it, Father?” asked Mrs. Morton who had come in and overheard this last remark. “Alice seems very much wrought up and I promised her I would speak to you.”
“Why, I told her last night if I were in her place I’d just hold on to the papers and see if Gassett inquires for them and if he does, make him prove his right to them. It’s up to him to show they are his.”
“Are they very valuable?”
“Yes, they are worth about five thousand dollars. It would be a windfall for Alice, all right.”
Mrs. Morton considered.
“Well, I don’t know what a girl in her position would do with that much money if she had it.” Mrs. Morton was English and very firm in the belief that class distinctions were a part of the Divine plan.
“Chicken Little here says she’d go to school,” Dr. Morton replied.
“Go to school! Why, Alice is twenty. Well, I think she’d better be content in the station to which the Lord has called her, myself,” said Mrs. Morton dismissing the subject easily.
Chicken Little had been listening to her elders with the liveliest interest. She could not quite understand it all but she had done her best. Hurt by her mother’s indifferent tone, she burst out indignantly:
“The Lord didn’t put Alice in any station—she hasn’t been on a train since her mother died. She told me so and she wants to go to school just awful.”