Some of the neighbors had got rich by oil, and Gran’ther Groves, as his neighbors called him, expected prosperity, too, if the lessees ever put down oil wells on his place, so that he could get some royalties on the yield. But they were “dretful slow,” he complained, adding that he was like to be dead and in his grave before luck struck the family.
Grandfather Groves, indeed, had been in hard luck many years, having four orphan grandchildren to rear and support in his old age.
His son and his son’s wife had died in Kansas in their youth, leaving one boy, Terry, and twin girls, Patty and Lydia. Sympathizing neighbors, not wishing them to come upon the town for support, had promptly raised a purse and sent the orphans, tagged, by express to their Grandfather Groves, in West Virginia.
Pretty Nell, his daughter, had eloped with a fine young Northerner, who was on a hunting trip in the neighborhood, and for three years little was known or heard of her, till she returned one stormy winter night, ill and faded and heartbroken, coming home to die, she said.
She had quarreled with her husband and left him forever. His family, the grand, rich Somervilles, had disliked her and were always coming between them, so she would never go back.
She had had one child, but it died at a year old and was buried in the Somerville vault at Greenwood.
Nell died when her second child was born, though she lived long enough to kiss the pictured face of her husband, and say:
“You may write to him when I am dead. He can have little Eva if he wishes.”
But the father and mother, loath to part with all that was left of their bonny Nell, never wrote. They resented the coldness that had kept the husband from following his wife and suing for a reconciliation. They kept the child for their own.
“We will bring her up with Fred’s little orphans, and her cold, proud kin in New York need never be troubled with poor Nell’s child,” they said, and devoted themselves to their grandchildren.