"Oh, my dear," she sobbed at last, "I am very foolish to be so overcome; but if it had only come in Frank's--in your father's time, it might--it might have saved him;" and here she broke down. "Ah, to be sure, poor thing!" ejaculated Uncle Geoffrey in a sympathizing tone; "that is what is troubling her; but you must cheer up, Dora, for, as I have always told you, Frank was never meant to be a long-lived man." "What are you all talking about?" I burst out, with vexed impatience. "What has Mrs. Podgill's death to do with father? and why is mother crying? and what makes you all so mysterious and tiresome?" for I was exasperated at the incongruity between mother's tears and Allan's amused face. "Tell her," gasped out mother: and Uncle Geoffrey, clearing his voice, proceeded to be spokesman, only Allan interrupted him at every word. "Why, you see, child, your mother is just a little upset at receiving some good news--" "Battling good news," put in Allan. "It is natural for her, poor thing! to think of your father; but we tell her that if he had been alive things would have shaped themselves differently--" "Of course they would," from that tiresome Allan. "Aunt Podgill, being a cantankerous--I mean a prejudiced--person, would never have forgotten her grudge against your father; but as in our last moments 'conscience makes cowards of us all,' as Shakespeare has it"--Uncle Geoffrey always quoted Shakespeare when he was agitated, and Allan said, "Hear, hear!" softly under his breath--"she could not forget the natural claims of blood; and so, my dear," clearing his throat a little more, "she has left all her little fortune to your mother; and a pretty little penny it is, close upon seven hundred a year, and the furniture besides." "Uncle Geoffrey!" now it was my turn to gasp. Jack and Dot burst out laughing at my astonished face; only Dot squeezed my hand, and whispered, "Isn't it splendid, Essie?" Mother looked at me tearfully. "It is for your sakes I am glad, that my darling girls may not have to work. Carrie can have every comfort now; and you can stay with us, Esther, and we need not be divided any longer." "Hurrah," shouted Dot, waving his spoon over his head; but I only kissed mother without speaking; a strange, unaccountable feeling prevented me. If we were rich--or rather if we had this independence--I must not go on teaching Flurry; my duty was at home with mother and Carrie. I could have beaten myself for my selfishness; but it was true. Humiliating as it is to confess it, my first feeling was regret that my happy days at the Cedars were over. "You do not seem pleased," observed Allan, shrewdly, as he watched me. "I am so profoundly astonished that I am not capable of feeling," I returned hastily; but I blushed a little guiltily.