The Daughters of the Little Grey HouseTaggart, Marion Ames
General
The Daughters of the Little Grey House
Taggart, Marion Ames
Families -- Juvenile fiction
"Yes, into that world which holds no injustice," whispered Rob.
Mrs. Winslow was silent, and Rob waited, tears in her eyes, with the
hand which had taken Aunt Azraella's hand after it had touched her
hair, trembling eagerly.
"You see," Rob murmured when her aunt still kept silence, "it would
hurt Myrtle if you took the house from her, and she had to receive it
from me--and she has not deserved hurting."
"If I don't do this you will be made to see that the house is yours and
that you can keep it," said Aunt Azraella slowly.
"Never, Aunt Azraella!" said Rob, "I shall give this house to Myrtilla
Hasbrook; won't you do it for me?"
Mrs Winslow lay still, her head half turned from Rob. Then, suddenly
she faced her.
"Yes, I will," she said. "But I hate to."
Rob sprang to her feet with an exclamation of delight. "Thank you,
thank you more than I can say, dear Aunt Azraella! You are good to me,
and I shall never forget."
"I hear the hall clock striking three; I took my medicine by that, this
one is slow. Give me my drops. I wonder if any one ever heard of undue
influence brought to bear on a dying woman to take away a gift she had
made the person influencing her? You have a good deal of Sylvester Grey
in you after all, Roberta; it's lucky you've got enough Winslow to save
you from being all visionary and impractical," said Rob's uncle's widow
with something between admiration and disgust in her voice.
In the morning Mrs. Winslow repented of her promise. She sent everybody
from her room while she talked to Bruce Rutherford of the matter.
Rob dared not speculate on what Bruce told Mrs. Winslow; he kept his
promise to Rob and urged the change of will--that was all that she
knew--and, after all, it was enough.
Mr. Dinsmore came up that forenoon, and was closeted with Aunt
Azraella.
When Rob brought her aunt her broth at noon the sick woman looked up
at her with an inscrutable look. "I have kept my promise, Roberta;
Myrtilla has the house," she said. "You're a foolish child, but maybe
yours is wise folly. I suppose I should not be able to admit that much
if I had not come to where you can look through."
More than that she never said, and in a day came the suffering that Dr.
Fairbairn had foreseen, and with grim patience, and with the help of
morphine Aunt Azraella waited the end.
It had come, and the Greys were back again in the little grey house,
Myrtilla Hasbrook was installed in the big one, with her four little
children to banish effectually its orderly primness under Aunt Azraella.
To Rob's unspeakable chagrin the secret of her generosity had leaked
out; perhaps Aunt Azraella had meant it to be known, for she had acted
upon Rob's thoughtless suggestion of a codicil, leaving the original
bequest of the house to her to be read on the opening of the will, and
she had so framed the codicil that it more than hinted at its being,
the result of influence--and whose that influence save Rob's?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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