"It is something that I want to do for you," said her aunt. "Once I should have sent for Oswyth under these circumstances, but since you showed so much character and business ability at the time that you held out against us all in selling your father's invention I regard you as the cleverest of your family in business matters. Now, first of all, Roberta, I want you should understand that I have an incurable disease." Rob caught her breath, and gazed speechlessly at Aunt Azraella, not knowing how to reply to such a statement made with as little emotion as if Mrs. Winslow had told her that she was going to the post-office. "I have seen Dr. Fairbairn, and he brought up two physicians from the city," Aunt Azraella continued, after waiting an instant for Rob to speak. "They tell me that I may live three years, but I am entirely without hope of living longer than that. There isn't any particular hurry--" here Aunt Azraella paused, and Rob sat helplessly waiting. Surely Aunt Azraella did not mean that there was no hurry about dying! And could it be that she was hearing aright? Aunt Azraella could not possibly be talking in this indifferent way of her doom! "But I thought," Mrs. Winslow went on, "that I should like to have everything settled. All the money that your uncle left me will go to you three girls, as it should. But I don't seem to care about leaving what came from my family to my own relations. I always liked all the Winslows, and I can't find any particular affection for the Browns in my heart when I search it--there's no one nearer than cousins and two nieces on that side anyway. So I'm going to leave you and Oswyth and Prudence--" Aunt Azraella used the full names, as befitting testamentary intentions--"thirty thousand dollars each, and I'm going to leave you this house." "Aunt Azraella!" protested Rob, between laughing and crying, for her nerves were getting the upper hand in this singular interview. "Please don't tell me such things; please don't talk about dying!" "Roberta, I want you should be sensible," her aunt rebuked her. "There is no reason why people should not face facts and admit them. Within three years I shall be no more, and you three girls will have the bulk of my property. If you marry those wealthy Rutherfords you won't need it--" "Aunt Azraella, I'm not going to marry the Rutherfords!" cried poor Rob. "And you are not really ill."