“From the above recital of facts you will plainly see, being a man of business yourself, that Mr. Cameron’s financial affairs were in a much worse condition when he went away than he himself dreamed of.
“I immediately looked up the Stonebridge Building and Loan Association. It is even more moribund than the papers state. The fifteen hundred dollars Mr. Cameron put into it from time to time might just as well have been dropped into the sea.
“You know, he had only his salary on The Morning Beacon. They were rather decent to him, when they saw his health breaking down, to offer him the chance of going to the Mediterranean as correspondent. He was to furnish articles on ‘The Débris of a World War’—stories of the peaceful sections of Europe which have to care for the human wrecks from the battlefields.
“It rather cramped Mr. Cameron’s immediate resources for your sister to go with him, and he drew ahead on his expense and salary account. I know that Mrs. Cameron feared to allow him to go alone across the ocean. He was really in a bad way; but she proposed to come back immediately on the Dunraven if he improved on the voyage across.
“Their means really did not allow of their taking the child; the steamship company would not hear of a half-fare for her. She is a nice little girl, and my wife would have been glad to keep her longer, but in the end she would have to go to you, as, I understand, there are no other relatives.
“Of course, the flat is here, and the furniture. If you do not care to come on to attend to the matter yourself, I will do the best I can to dispose of either or both. Mr. Cameron had paid a year’s rent in advance—rather an unwise thing, I thought—and the term has still ten months to run. He did it so that his wife, on her return from abroad, might have no worry on her mind. Perhaps the flat might be sublet, furnished, to advantage. You might state your pleasure regarding this.
“You will see, by the copy of your brother-in-law’s will that I enclose, that you have been left in full and sole possession and guardianship of his property and affairs, including Carolyn May.”
And if somebody had shipped him a crocodile from the Nile, Joseph Stagg would have felt little more at a loss as to what disposal to make of the creature than he felt now regarding his little niece.
“Well—she’ll be a nuisance; an awful nuisance,” was his final comment, with a mountainous sigh.