"Good-afternoon, Aunt Azraella. How are you, Tobias? I hope you remember that I saved your life?" said Rob, bringing into the room the freshness of her beautiful colouring, and the bright January air.
"You do not look tired, Roberta," said Mrs. Winslow. "Last night was a great success, I hear. Elvira and Aaron were full of it when they got home, but I have heard from others to-day that it was really a beautiful entertainment, and that while all three Grey girls were more than pretty, that Prue was very handsome."
"She was magnificent, Aunt, really," said Rob. "Prue is going to be so handsome that I don't know what is to be done with her."
"She'll do it all for herself," remarked Mrs. Winslow with unusual brevity and wisdom.
"Roberta, lay off your coat and furs, and take that chair and bring it over here. There is something I must talk to you about. Has your mother told you?"
"She told me that you wanted to see me about something, yes, Aunt," said Rob as she obeyed. "Is it something that I can do for you?"
"It is something that I want to do for you," said her aunt. "Once I should have sent for Oswyth under these circumstances, but since you showed so much character and business ability at the time that you held out against us all in selling your father's invention I regard you as the cleverest of your family in business matters. Now, first of all, Roberta, I want you should understand that I have an incurable disease."
Rob caught her breath, and gazed speechlessly at Aunt Azraella, not knowing how to reply to such a statement made with as little emotion as if Mrs. Winslow had told her that she was going to the post-office.
"I have seen Dr. Fairbairn, and he brought up two physicians from the city," Aunt Azraella continued, after waiting an instant for Rob to speak. "They tell me that I may live three years, but I am entirely without hope of living longer than that. There isn't any particular hurry—" here Aunt Azraella paused, and Rob sat helplessly waiting. Surely Aunt Azraella did not mean that there was no hurry about dying! And could it be that she was hearing aright? Aunt Azraella could not possibly be talking in this indifferent way of her doom!
"But I thought," Mrs. Winslow went on, "that I should like to have everything settled. All the money that your uncle left me will go to you three girls, as it should. But I don't seem to care about leaving what came from my family to my own relations. I always liked all the Winslows, and I can't find any particular affection for the Browns in my heart when I search it—there's no one nearer than cousins and two nieces on that side anyway. So I'm going to leave you and Oswyth and Prudence—" Aunt Azraella used the full names, as befitting testamentary intentions—"thirty thousand dollars each, and I'm going to leave you this house."