The spring had passed away, and the warm June sun was shining over
Spring Bank, whose mistress and servants were very lonely now, for Hugh
was absent, and with him the light of the house had departed. Business
of his late uncle's had taken him to New Orleans, where he might
possibly remain all the summer. 'Lina was glad, for since the fatal
dress affair there had been but little harmony between herself and her
brother. The tenderness awakened by her long illness seemed to have been
forgotten, and Hugh's manner toward her was cold and irritating to the
last degree, so that the young lady rejoiced to be freed from his
presence.
"I do hope he'll stay all summer," she said one morning, when speaking
of him to her mother. "I think it's a heap nicer without him, though
dull enough at the best. I wish we could go somewhere, some watering
place I mean. There's the Tifftons, just returned from New York, and I
don't much believe they can afford it more than we, for I heard their
place was mortgaged, or something. Oh, bother, to be so poor," and the
young lady gave a little angry jerk at the tags she was unbraiding.
"Whar's ole miss's?" asked Claib, who had just returned from Versailles.
"Thar's a letter for you," and depositing it upon the bureau, he left
the room.
"Whose writing is that?" 'Lina said, catching it up and examining the
postmark. "Shall I open it?" she called, and ere her mother could reply,
she had broken the seal, and held in her hand the draft which made her
the heiress of one thousand dollars.
Had the fabled godmother of Cinderella appeared to her suddenly, she
would scarcely have been more bewildered.
"Mother," she screamed again, reading aloud the "'Pay to the order of
Adaline Worthington,' etc. Who is Alice Johnson? What does she say? 'My
dear Eliza, feeling that I have not long to live--' What--dead, hey?
Well, I'm sorry for that, but, I must say, she did a very sensible thing
at the last, sending me a thousand dollars. We'll go somewhere now,
won't we?" and clutching fast the draft, the heartless girl yielded the
letter to her mother, who, burying her face in her hands, sobbed
bitterly as the past came back to her, when the Alice, now at rest and
herself were girls together.
'Lina took up the letter her mother had dropped and read it through.
"Wants you to take her daughter, Alice. Is the woman crazy? And her
nurse, Densie, Densie Densmore. Where have I heard that name before?
Say, mother, let's talk the matter over. Shall you let Alice come? Ten
dollars a week, they'll pay. Let me see. Five hundred and twenty dollars
a year. Whew! We are rich as Jews. Our ship is really coming in," and
'Lina rang the bell and ordered Lulu to bring "a lemonade with ice cut
fine and a heap of sugar in it."