To her Richard calmly announced:
“Here is a draft for thirty thousand—insurance on the Valkyrie. Uncle Ramon forgave you for all your insults.”
“And he did leave his money to me?” cried Teresa in accents of self-reproach. “And I was so awful horrid to him! It is from Señor de Mello? What does he say?”
Richard gave her the enclosure in Spanish. She read it swiftly to the end and looked up to observe:
“He even left me the little brown monkey, Ricardo. That is too much. I will send word to give that monkey to somebody that will be good to it, with a pension, eh? The house he can sell or rent, Señor de Mello says, if we do not wish to live in Cartagena. Poor Uncle Ramon! I am sad and ashamed of myself because I was not always nice to him. I guess I must cry a little.”
Presently the heiress brightened and went on to announce, with headlong ardor:
“First I will buy William a big, new, shiny automobile and give him plenty of money to go through college with. Then I will put an electric light plant in this old farmhouse, and a tiled kitchen and plenty of bathrooms and—let me see—I think I will give your heretic church in Fairfield a new organ. How much money have I got left, Ricardo?”
“Quite a package, sweetheart. Don’t stop yet. I am enjoying it.”
Mrs. Cary raised her hands in horror, shaken to the depths of her thrifty soul.
“For the land’s sake, child, keep the money for yourself. What sense is there in spending it on us? I declare you make my head spin like a top.”