“Oh,” said Ada regretfully; “is he dead?”
She had grown to look upon him as one of her friends in the big cruel city, and now he had gone too.
“Yes, he’s dead,” the fat woman said emphatically; “and he’s left a mighty pile of dollars behind him. He used to stint himself of house-fuel, and go to bed whenever he got home from business on a winter’s day to save light, and wore clothes a coloured man wouldn’t give to his father. What’s the use of saving like that if you’re going to leave all your fortune to a total stranger.”
“Poor old man,” the girl said; “he was really rather mad, but somehow I liked him; he seemed to belong more to the last century than to this.”
“Well, it appears he’s left every dollar he’s got to some girl that he thought deserved some money, a milliner’s girl, the papers say, who once saved his life in a snowstorm or something like that.”
Ada read the long and highly-dramatic account of the old man’s curious will.
“Yes, I wish I were the girl,” she said; “but I fear there’s no fairy prince in disguise watching my poor trivial round and common task. But just fancy, a girl earning her own living suddenly to find herself an heiress!”
The boarding-house bell sounded, and the hungry children came bounding down to dinner.
“Ada,” whispered Marjory at table, “a man came to see you this morning, and I said you were out. He asked me a lot of questions, and I answered before I remembered that perhaps you would rather I didn’t.”
“What sort of questions?” Ada said smiling, and hoping that at last they were going to receive news of their father.