“I have never let him know how much it is, and I do not mean to tell him, till I hand it over. I have never touched a penny of it, my dear madam; which I never would have told you, if you had shown a doubt of me. I have allowed it to accumulate at four per cent.; and the sum is now three thousand five hundred pounds, which will be transferred into the name of Kit, on the day that he marries Miss Fairthorn. I should have thought myself justified in deducting the twenty-five pounds reward, for his stupidity in losing himself in the snow; but Mr. Henderson will not accept it. I have kept Kit from a baby, and he was dreadful with his clothes, and broke the backs of nearly all the books he had at school. But I shall not charge him sixpence, ma’am. He has worked well for me, and he can lay in a tree very nearly as well as I can.” “Mr. Orchardson, you are a gentleman,” cried my aunt, much impressed with the increase of money; “and I would ask you as a favour, in return for my inquiries, to allow me to discharge Dr. Sippet’s account.” “With pleasure, Miss Parslow, for it will be very stiff, and the uphill time of the year is before me. I do not pretend to be a gentleman, madam; but I should not be a man if I wronged my brother’s baby. The only thing I ask you is to keep this from Kit’s knowledge, and leave me to tell him at my own time. I have hinted to him once or twice that he has something coming; but if I were to tell him he would go and tell his Kitty, and I wish it to be kept from all that lot.” “He shall not know a word of it through me, I can assure you. And I shall consider what I can do for them. But the first thing is to set him on his legs again.” At this very moment, I was being set by a happy little accident upon my legs, as well as enjoying a delight which no money (at the finest compound interest) can insure. In the corner of the room which my aunt had so decried, and where I had passed so many miserable weeks, an old wooden bracket with three little shelves was nailed against the yellow-ochred wall. I had often cast my weary eyes in that direction, and vaguely watched a spider, who was in a doleful plight, with his legs drawn together, and no stomach left between them; such a time was it since he had tasted a good fly. On the bottom shelf were bottles of a loathsome disposition, pill-boxes and galley-pots, and measures no less repulsive to good taste; on the middle shelf lay my mother’s Prayer-book, and some papers of directions, and orders, and powders and the like; but what was on the top shelf I could not tell, and had often wondered languidly in the wanderings of hazy speculation. And I might have been content to wonder still, without any guide-post of interest, if I had not heard Miss Parslow say—“Ah, that would do him a lot more good than those,” as she pointed to the top shelf, and then to the others.