CHAPTER VII.
MILLBANK AFTER THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.
Mrs. Walter Scott could not easily give up her belief in a later will, and after everything about the house was quiet, and the tired inmates asleep, she went from one vacant room to another, her slippered feet treading lightly and giving back no sound to betray her to any listening ear, as she glided through the lower rooms, and then ascended to the garret, where was a barrel of old receipts and letters, and papers of no earthly use whatever. These she examined minutely, but in vain. The missing document was not there, and she turned to Jessie’s picture, and was just bending down for a look at that, when a sudden noise startled her, and, turning round, she saw a head, surmounted by a broad-frilled cap, appearing up the stairway. It was Hester’s head, and Hester herself came into full view, with a short night-gown on, and her feet encased in a pair of Aleck’s felt slippers, which, being a deal too big, clicked with every step, and made the noise Mrs. Walter Scott first heard.
“Oh, you’re at it, be you!” Hester said, putting her tallow candle down on the floor. “I thought I heard somethin’ snoopin’ round, and got up to see what ’twas. I guess I’ll hunt too, if you like, for I’m afraid you might set the house afire.”
“Thank you; I’m through with my search for to-night,” was Mrs. Walter Scott’s lofty answer, as she swept down the garret stairs past Hester Floyd and into her own room.
There was a bitter hatred existing between these two women now, and had the will been found, Hester’s tenure at Millbank would have hung upon a very slender thread. But the will was not found, neither that night nor the next day, when Mrs. Walter Scott searched openly and thoroughly with Roger as her aid, for which Hester called him a fool, and Frank, who was beginning to get an inkling of matters, a “spooney.” Mrs. Walter Scott was outgeneralled, and the second day after the funeral she took her departure and went back to Lexington Avenue, where her first act was to dismiss the extra servant she had hired when Millbank seemed in her grasp, while her second was to countermand her orders for so much mourning.
If Squire Irving had left her nothing, she, of course, had nothing to expend in crape and bombazine, and when she next appeared on Broadway, there were pretty green strings on her straw hat, and a handsome thread-lace veil in place of the long crape which had covered her face at the funeral. Mrs. Walter Scott had dropped back into her place in New York, and for a little time our story has no more to do with her ladyship, but keeps us at Millbank, where Roger, with Col. Johnson as his guardian, reigned the triumphant heir.
As was natural, the baby was the first object considered after the excitement of Mrs. Walter Scott’s departure had subsided. What should be done with it? Col. Johnson asked Roger this question in Hester’s presence, and Roger answered at once, “I shall keep her and educate her as if she were my sister. If Hester feels that the care will be too much for her, I will get a nurse till the child is older.”
“Yes; and then I’ll have both nuss and baby to ’tend to,” Hester exclaimed. “If it must stay, I’ll see to it myself, with Ruey’s help. I can’t have a nuss under foot, doin’ nothin’.”
This was not exactly what Roger wanted. He had not yet lost sight of that picture of the French nurse in a cap, to whom Hester did not bear the slightest resemblance; but he saw that Hester’s plan was better than his, and quietly gave up the French nurse and the pleasant nursery, but he ordered the crib, and the baby-wagon and the bright blanket with it, and then he said to Hester, “Baby must have a name,” adding that once, when the woman in the cars was hushing it, she had called it something which sounded like Magdalen. “That you know was mother’s second name,” he said. “So suppose we call her ‘Jessie Magdalen;’” but against that Hester arrayed herself so fiercely that he gave up “Jessie,” but insisted upon “Magdalen,” and added to it his own middle name, “Lennox.”