“Well, I suppose I could,” I replied, rather indifferently.
“I never liked your uncle very well. He is too sharp for me. I’ll see what can be done.”
“I wouldn’t say anything about meddling with Captain Halliard, at present,” I suggested, for I was somewhat afraid of him myself.
“I’ll see about it; but I didn’t mean he should trouble you about that money. He’d no business to do it, and I shall tell him so when I see him.”
I did not intend she should see him at present. I went to the office of Squire Townsend, on my way down town, and left a message for him to call upon my aunt. I was fully persuaded in my own mind that she intended to make a will, and that she had come up to Boston in order to have the instrument drawn up by her old friend. Every thing looked rosy to me, for the old lady would certainly leave me the larger portion, if not the whole, of her worldly wealth.
When I went home in the afternoon I learned that Squire Townsend had spent a couple of hours with Aunt Rachel, but Lilian had not heard a word that passed between them. Then the squire had called a carriage, and they had gone off together. I was not very anxious to know where they had gone, though I concluded that it was only to the office of her old friend for the purpose of having the will properly signed and witnessed. Now, as always before, Aunt Rachel kept her own counsel. She never told how much she was worth, or what she intended to do with her property. She was true to her antecedents, and during the remainder of her stay she never mentioned the nature of her business with Squire Townsend, as she invariably called him. She said a good deal about the worthy lawyer’s history, and told stories about him at school. She was glad to meet him once more before she left the world, but she did not hint that she had special business with him.
The old lady staid her week out, and then said she must go home. She did not think the city agreed with her. She did not sleep as well nights as at Springhaven. Both Lilian and I pressed her to remain longer, and promised to do every thing we could to make her happy, but she was resolute, and I attended her home, a week to a day from the time she arrived.
I never saw her again.
During the week that Aunt Rachel was with me, Bustumups began to look a little shaky. From sixty the stock went down to fifty-five in one day, but it immediately rallied, and those who managed it assured me it was only because money was a little tight, and a considerable portion of the stock had been forced upon the market. I proposed to sell, as I had promised myself that I would on the first appearance of a decline.
“Don’t do it,” said the operator. “Wait three days, and you can take sixty, if not sixty-five, for your stock. If you crowd it upon the market at once, you will drive it down, and cheat yourself out of twelve hundred dollars.”