"It was right," Nannie said, fiercely, trembling all over, "it was right, because it was necessary. Oh, what do your laws amount to, when it comes to dying? When it comes to a time like that! She was dying—you don't seem to understand—Mamma was dying! And she wanted Blair to have that money; and just because she hadn't the strength to write her name, you would let her wish fail. Of course I wrote it for her! Yes; I know what you call it. But what do I care what it is called, if I carried out her wish and gave Blair the money she wanted him to have? Now he has got it, and nobody can take it away from him."
"My dear child, if he kept it, it would be stealing."
"You can't steal from your mother," Nannie said; "Mamma would be the first one to say so!"
Mr. Ferguson looked over at his niece and shook his head; how were they to make her understand? "He can't keep it, Nannie. When he understands that it isn't his, he will simply give it back to the estate, and then it will come to you."
"To me?" she said, astounded. And he explained that she was her stepmother's residuary legatee. She looked blank, and he told her the meaning of the term.
"The estate is going to meet the bequests with a fair balance; and as that balance will come to you, this money you gave to Blair will be yours, too."
She had been standing, with Elizabeth's pitying arms about her; but at the shock of his explanation she seemed to collapse. She sank down in a chair, panting. "It wasn't necessary! I could have just given it to him."
Later, when Robert Ferguson was walking home with his niece, he, too, said, grimly: "No; it 'wasn't necessary,' as she says, poor child! She could have given it to him; just as she will give it to him, now. Well, well, to think of that mouse, Nannie, upsetting the lion's plans!"
Elizabeth was silent.
"What I can't understand," he ruminated, "is how that signature could pass at the bank; a girl like Nannie able to copy a signature so that a bank wouldn't detect it!"