"It is customary to notify legatees."
"And she wasn't even a legatee," added Miss Maria, grimly. He never made a will."
"No," said Hugh, with an ugly laugh, "he merely trusted to our promises."
There was a brief but violent silence.
"I think, Winthrop," Miss Maria broke it, "that instead of questioning the propriety of my language, you might do well to consider your nephew's."
Hugh half-tendered the letter. "You're so confoundedly clever. Uncle Winthrop. You—you just put the whole thing up to the poor woman. I can't pick out a word to show where you said it, but the tone of your letter is exactly this, 'Here's the money for you, and if you take it you're doing an unheard-of thing.' She saw it right enough. Her answer is just defence of why she has to take it—some of it. She's a mother with three children, struggling to keep above water. She's a human animal fighting for her young. So she takes, most apologetically, most unhappily, a part of what he left her, and she hates to take that. It's the most pitiful thing—"
"Piteous," corrected Miss Maria, in a tone like a bite.
Mr. Fowler laid the tips of his fingers very delicately on his nephew's knee. "Will you show me the place or places where I make these very damaging observations?"
"That's just it. I can't pick them out, but—"
"I am sure that you cannot, because they exist only in your somewhat—shall we say, lyrical imagination? I laid the circumstances before the woman and she acted as she saw fit to act. Hugh, my dear boy, I wish that you would try to restrain your—your growing tendency to excitability. I know that this is a trying day for all of us."