"I don't know what to think of it," said Lois, in a dry voice. "I don't s'pose you do. Well, I'm goin' to tell you. You know, I s'pose, that Mr. Tuxbury took me for your aunt Esther. You heard him call me Mis' Maxwell?" Lois nodded; her dilated eyes never wavered from her mother's face. "I s'pose you heard what he was sayin' to me when you come in. Lois, I didn't tell him I was your aunt Esther. The minute I come in, he took me for her, an' Mis' Henry Maxwell come into his office, an' she did, and so did Mr. Tuxbury's sister. I wa'n't goin' to tell them I wa'n't her." The impulse of flight in Lois' watchful eyes became so strong that it seemed almost to communicate to her muscles. With her face still turned toward her mother, she appeared to be fleeing from her. Mrs. Field stood her ground stanchly. "No, I wa'n't," she went on. "An' I'll tell you why. I'm goin' to have that fifteen hundred dollars of your poor father's earnin's that I lent your uncle out of this property, an' this is all the way to do it, an' I'm goin' to do it." "I thought," gasped Lois--"I thought maybe it belonged to us anyway if Aunt Esther was dead." "It didn't. The money was all left to old Mr. Maxwell's niece in case Esther died first." "Couldn't you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred dollars? Wouldn't he have given you some? O mother!" "I was goin' to if he hadn't took me for her, but it wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't have been obliged to pay it, an' folks ain't fond of payin' over money when they ain't obliged to. I'd been a fool to have asked him after he took me for her." "Then--you'd got this--all planned?" Her mother took her up sharply. "No, I hadn't got it all planned," said she. "I don't deny it come into my head. I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I didn't go so far as to plan it; there needn't anybody say I did." "You ain't going to take the money?" "I'm goin' to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it." "Mother, you ain't going to stay here, and make folks think you're Aunt Esther?" "Yes, I am." Then all Lois' horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry--"O mother!" Mrs. Field never flinched. "If you want to act so an' feel so about it, you can," said she. "Your mother is some older than you, an' she knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her. I've thought it all over. That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor father worked hard to earn. I lent it to your uncle Edward, an' he lost it. I never see a dollar of it afterward. He never paid me a cent of interest money. It ain't anything more'n fair that I should be paid for it out of his father's property. If poor Esther had lived, the money'd gone to her, an' she'd paid me fast enough. Now the way's opened for me to get it, I ain't goin' to let it go. Talk about it's bein' right, if it ain't right to stoop down an' pick up anybody's just dues, I don't know what right is, for my part." "Mother!" "What say?"