“Yes, you have,” said the farmer; “and if my wife had not been staying with our sick daughter at Worcester, she’d have been in to tell you the same. My dear, you are just going, please, to make a friend of me. And you won’t think two or three questions, that I should like to put, impertinent, will you?”
“That I certainly will not,” said Anne.
“Well, now, to begin with: Did your father make a will?”
“Oh yes. I hold it.”
“And do you chance to know how the property is left?”
“To me. No name but my own is mentioned in it.”
“Then you’ll be all right,” said Mr. Coney. “I feared he might have been leaving somebody else some. You will have about two hundred and fifty pounds a-year; and that’s enough for a young girl. When your father first came over, he spoke to me of his income and his means.”
“I—I fear the income will be somewhat diminished from what it was,” hesitated Anne, turning red at having to confess so much, because it would tell against her stepmother. “My father has had to sell out a good deal lately, to entrench upon his capital. I think the trouble it gave him hastened his end.”
“Sell out for what?” asked old Coney.
“For bills, and—and debts, that came upon him.”