“He did not mention how long he has lived in Baltimore, but just incidentally mentioned that Jerusha’s home was with him until she rented the cottage where a lady lived whose name was Ashley.”
“It is so surprising that I can as yet scarcely comprehend it,” said Hilda.
“It was the same to me, and the perusal of the two letters sent by request of Jerusha was a great grief to my husband. I will tell you of them.
“The mother of Jerusha and Horace Flint was the only daughter of Father De Cormis, and was several years older than her two brothers—Rev. Horace De Cormis, of Woodmont, Ohio, and Robert De Cormis, my husband.
“She was beautiful, but self-willed, and in spite of the threats of her father and the entreaties of her mother persisted in receiving the attentions of a young man named Archibald Flint, who was visiting Philadelphia from San Francisco.
“He was handsome, cultured and amiable, but without knowledge of business of any kind.
“To break off this intimacy Miss De Cormis was sent to a distant boarding school. Mr. Flint followed, she eloped and they were married, and for several years her parents heard no word of them. Not knowing that during this time her mother had died, and being in abject poverty, Mrs. Flint wrote to her parents from her poor home in Baltimore, beseeching them for the sake of her little daughter, Jerusha—named for Mother De Cormis—to send relief.
“My father-in-law was a man of implacable temper; he wrote commanding her never to communicate with him again. He reproached her as being the cause of her mother’s death, and added that her ingratitude and disobedience to her parents was being visited upon her children. He concluded his letter by saying that he disowned her as a daughter, had disinherited her, and had commanded his young sons, Horace and Robert, under the same penalty, never to see her or communicate with her in any way.
“In this letter he returned the one she had written; and these were the two letters which Jerusha had requested her brother Horace to send their grandfather; but he being years before in his grave, we, who are living in his old home, received them.”
“Poor Jerusha had these letters,—her mother’s to grieve over, and her grandfather’s to sour her against the world,” sighed Hilda. “Her poor young mother was severely punished for her disobedience. I wonder how long she lived after receiving that letter?”