Aunt Jimmy's Will

by Mabel Osgood Wright

Bird began to breathe more freely to know he was going away in the morning. Her father had told her in one of the long sleepless nights of his illness about his two half-brothers, one in Australia, as far as he knew, and the other in New York. Their mother had been a strong, black-eyed, south-country lass, but his mother, the wife of his father’s later years, was a gentle, fair-haired, English girl, the governess in the family to which his father was steward. At her death when he was a lad of about fifteen, family differences arose, and he had gone to his mother’s people until he finally came to America with this brother John.

John was sturdy and coarse-grained; Terence delicate and sensitive. They soon parted, and in the years between the artist had written occasionally to his brother, but kept him in ignorance of his poverty. Yet, in spite of knowing it all, Bird was bitterly disappointed in her uncle. She built hopes about him, for did he not live in New York, and there were schools where painting was taught in that magical city, also the man lived there who wanted the wall-papers. Ah, if her uncle had only been different, he might have asked her to visit him or perhaps even have known the wall-paper man himself.

But this uncle seemed an impossibility and fairly repelled her, so that to get out of his sight was all she desired. Presently she went into the house, and, after carefully dusting her plain, little, black straw hat and laying it on the sofa in the best room, she covered her new dress with Mrs. Lane’s gingham apron that hung on its usual peg and fell to work at helping Lammy with the supper.

Now Bird was a clever little housewife while Lammy was very clumsy at the work, so that in a few minutes they were both absorbed and chatting quite cheerfully, never dreaming of the conversation that was going on in the north porch. Only the white-curtained windows of the best room could hear it, and they were shut tight.

“Now, Mr. Lane, since the youngster’s gone in, I guess we might as well get right down to business. I’ve shown you my papers and proofs, and there’s no special use rubbing it into her that her father was a dead failure clear from the start, and that the sticks of furniture he left and the few dollars banked or coming from his work ’ll only square up his accounts and leave the kid on the world, so to speak. I own I’m clean flabbergasted myself, for I thought he was a man of some property through his wife, for when he wrote, his letters were chuck full of high ideas for the girl here.”

Joshua Lane fidgeted miserably on the edge of his chair, and if ever a man longed for the presence and ready tongue of his wife, it was he.

“I suppose that’s one way o’ lookin’ at it,” he assented after a while, “but mebbe in some way he didn’t flat out so much as it looks. He never gave an ill word to any one, and Bird here’s as smart and talkable and writes a fist as good as the seminary principal over to Northboro, all through his teachin’, so no wonder she set a store by him. As to leavin’ the child on the world, she’ll never feel the hurtin’ edge of it while mother and Joshua Lane’s got roof and bite. I told O’More so, and I reckon it eased him considerable.”

“Smart, is she?” echoed the other; “that’s a mercy. Girls have to get a move on them nowadays in the city, and if they can’t start in at type-writing or something when they’re sixteen or so, they get shoved out of the race as leftovers by a new lot before they’ve earned their ten a week. I’ve got a good job now, but I’ve had to hustle for it and keep a lively step, too. That’s why it goes hard to lose two days’ time on this business. I was mighty afraid when I saw what a forsaken hole this was that the girl might be green as the grass, and n. g. altogether. No, I didn’t mean any offence,” he said, as he noticed Joshua’s face flush at his reference to the pretty hillside village, “but I’ve never had a use for the country. Give me streets with a push of people and a lively noise and trolleys going by at night to remind you yer alive, if you don’t sleep straight through.

“Of course, knowing nothing of the circumstances before I left, I couldn’t quite fix a plan,—might have had to wait around and see to that mill property if it hadn’t vamoosed, but as it is, I don’t see why Bird shouldn’t go right back with me to-morrow morning. I’ve got three lively boys besides a poor little crippled feller,—them and the city sights ’ll cheer her up. It’s different from what I thought to find, and I don’t owe Terry any favours of purse or tongue, but I’ve no girls, and blood’s thicker ’n water even though the English streak is heatin’ to an all-through Irishman,—but let that go. I’ll give her some schooling until she’s fit age to choose her trade, or if she’s tasty looking, get in some good shop, and she can ease her way along meantime in minding little Billy or helping the woman out. For I’d have you know that though I’ve a good job, and there’s always meat in the pot, we’re plain people of no pretence. I’ve money in a land company, though, that’ll soon give us our own home and not so far out either but what a gun would shoot into the Bowery.”