They were quiet a long while, both sitting with bowed heads as if in prayer; but presently Angy raised her face with an exclamation of dismay:
"Don't it beat all, that it happened jest tew late ter git in this week's 'Shoreville Herald'!"
"Tew late?" exclaimed the new-fledged capitalist. "Thar hain't nothin' tew late fer a man with money. We'll hire the editor tew git out another paper, fust thing ter-morrer!"
XXI
"OUR BELOVED BROTHER"
The services of the "Shoreville Herald," however, were not required to spread the news. The happiest and proudest couple on Long Island saw their names with the story of their sudden accession to wealth in a great New York daily the very next morning.
A tall, old gentleman with a real "barber's hair-cut," a shining, new high hat, a suit of "store clothes" which fitted as if they had been made for him, a pair of fur gloves, and brand-new ten-dollar boots; and a remarkably pretty, old lady in a violet bonnet, a long black velvet cape, with new shoes as well as new kid gloves, and a big silver-fox muff—this was the couple that found the paper spread out on the hall table at the Old Ladies' Home, with the sisters gathered around it, peering at it, weeping over it, laughing, both sorrowing and rejoicing.
"This'll be good-by ter Brother Abe," Aunt Nancy had sniffed when the news came over the telephone the day before; and though Miss Abigail had assured her that she knew Abe would come to see them real often, the matriarch still failed to be consoled.
"Hain't you noticed, gals," she persisted, "that thar hain't been a death in the house sence we took him in? An' I missed my reg'lar spell o' bronchitis last winter an' this one tew—so fur," she added dismally, and began to cough and lay her hands against her chest. "That was allus the way when I was a young 'un," she continued after a while; "I never had a pet dog or cat or even a tame chicken that it didn't up an' run erway sooner or later. This here loss, gals, 'll be the death o' me! Naow, mark my words!"
Then followed a consultation among the younger sisters, the result of which was that they met Abe in the morning with a unanimous petition. They could neither ask nor expect him to remain; that was impossible, but—