You must know that very soon after my adventure with Miss Crutty, and that cowardly ruffian, Captain Waters (he sailed the day after his insult to me, or I should most certainly have blown his brains out; _now_ he is living in England, and is my relation; but, of course, I cut the fellow). Very soon after these painful events another happened, which ended, too, in a sad disappointment. My dear papa died, and instead of leaving five thousand pounds as I expected, at the very least, left only his estate, which was worth but two. The land and house were left to me; to mamma and my sisters he left, to be sure, a sum of two thousand pounds in the hands of that eminent firm, Messrs. Pump, Aldgate, and Co., which failed within six months after his demise; and paid in five years about one shilling and ninepence in the pound; which really was all my dear mother and sisters had to live upon. The poor creatures were quite unused to money matters; and, would you believe it? when the news came of Pump and Aldgate's failure, mamma only smiled, and threw her eyes up to Heaven, and said, "Blessed be God, that we have still wherewithal to live: there are tens of thousands in this world, dear children, who would count our poverty riches." And with this she kissed my two sisters, who began to blubber, as girls always will do, and threw their arms round her neck, and then round my neck, until I was half stifled with their embraces, and slobbered all over with their tears. "Dearest mamma," said I, "I am very glad to see the noble manner in which you bear your loss; and more still to know that you are so rich as to be able to put up with it." The fact was, I really thought the old lady had got a private hoard of her own, as many of them have—a thousand pounds or so in a stocking. Had she put by thirty pounds a year, as well she might, for the thirty years of her marriage, there would have been nine hundred pounds clear, and no mistake. But still I was angry to think that any such paltry concealment had been practised—concealment too of _my_ money; so I turned on her pretty sharply, and continued my speech. "You say, ma'am, that you are rich, and that Pump and Aldgate's failure has no effect upon you. I am very happy to hear you say so, ma'am—very happy that you _are_ rich; and I should like to know where your property, my father's property, for you had none of your own,—I should like to know where this money lies—_where you have concealed it_, ma'am, and permit me to say, that when I agreed to board you and my two sisters for eighty pounds a year, I did not know that you had _other_ resources than those mentioned in my blessed father's will." This I said to her because I hated the meanness of concealment, not because I lost by the bargain of boarding them, for the three poor things did not eat much more than sparrows; and I've often since calculated that I had a clear twenty pounds a year profit out of them.