"Do remember, Martha," says she, "that you were not always sixty-three years old, and that once——Why, bless me! This must be Alicia Vernon's child. Is there a name on the back? There is! Verona Ashton Hemmingway, heiress to all that is left of poor Dick's fortune. She's a beauty, just like her mother."
"She's all of that," says I.
It didn't make any diff'rence to Aunt Martha who she was, though. She didn't think it right for young ladies to give away their pictures to young men. She was for askin' me how long I'd known Miss Vee, and——
"There, now, Martha," said Zenobia, "suppose we don't."
That's how it is I can guess who it was blew themselves for a corkin' big silver frame, and put Vee's picture in it, and stood it on my bureau. Course, Vee's on her way to foreign parts now, and there's no tellin' when she's comin' back. Besides, there ain't anything in it, anyway. But somehow that picture in the silver frame seems to help some.
CHAPTER XV
BATTING IT UP TO TORCHY
Nobody had to point him out to me. I hadn't been holdin' down the chair behind the brass gate more'n two days before I knew who was the living joke on the Corrugated Trust Company's force. It's Uncle Dudley, of course.