“‘You’re not James White!’ I said, getting as cold as clams, ‘I have his picture; he is dark, and stout, and personable, with a heavy beard, and but a little turned of fifty!’
“‘So I was, twenty years ago, when that picture was took,’ said the horrid old man, grinning and wobbling his chin as he came forward, and before I knew what he was doing he put his arm around my waist.
“‘How dared you both lie to me so!’ I cried, turning to Judith.
“‘I didn’t send you any picture; it was sister,’ said he.
“‘I didn’t lie—you deceived yourself, you never asked when the picture was taken! You are fifty and he was a grown man when you were in the primary,’ said Judith, sharp as a knife. And when I came to think of it I never had thought of this, or worked out his age.
“‘Give me back my money and I’ll leave this house to-night!’ I said, but even then Judith persuaded me to sleep over it and that things might look differently in the morning.
“They did—only worse—for that night one of the oldest boarders, a third cousin of theirs, crept in and told me that James White was already four times a widower, his farm being in a feverish sort of country, and that the girl—belonging to his second wife—who had come with him was really twenty, though she had never grown since she was ten, and had epileptic fits.
“I never slept a wink, but packed my trunks and slipped out for an expressman as soon as it was light, and moved to a woman’s temperance hotel that I had noticed not many blocks away.
“James White and his sister followed me hot-foot after breakfast, and words passed on both sides, Judith doing more talking than her brother, who it then seemed to me was somewhat lacking and wouldn’t have fought back without being egged on.