“But I sometimes wonder,” Mrs. Clayton sighed, “how it came about that Mehitable Fuller and I should have been so unevenly treated by Great-uncle Israel. Mehitable never did a hand’s turn for old Mr. Diller in her life. While you can remember yourself, Ethel, although you were but a tiny girl, that the old gentleman was brought here that time he had typhoid and he was a care on my hands for six months.” “Oh, Mother!” “I’m not begrudging the care,” her mother hastened to say. “And of course his lawyer afterward brought me the money for his board--six dollars a week for twenty-seven weeks. And I signed a paper saying it was all I could expect. Still--Well! if he had been alone in his own home and had had to hire a trained nurse and all that he’d have paid out a lot more money than he did.” “Now, Mother, never mind all that,” Ethel urged. “No, I realize it doesn’t sound nice,” Mrs. Clayton agreed. “But it seems funny. When I see those Fullers driving around so haughtily, and read about Mehitable, that I went to school with, and that pug-nosed girl of hers----” “Mercy! don’t let anybody hear you speak of Helen Fuller’s nose in such terms,” laughed Ethel. “And Helen is pretty. You’ve got to acknowledge that.” “Her nose _is_ a pug,” declared Mrs. Clayton. “That’s got nothing to do with those stocks. Great-uncle Israel’s will was peculiar. So they all say. No administrator mentioned. And he died with Gran Fuller right in the house----” “Don’t!” begged Ethel. “You must not intimate any wrongdoing, when there can have been no wrongdoing.” “What do you know about it? And you but a chit of a girl at the time!” demanded Mrs. Clayton. “Anyway, Gran Fuller was there, and he found the will. Mr. Mestinger, the lawyer, was dead then.” “But the witnesses were alive if the lawyer wasn’t. Of course it was Mr. Diller’s honest will.” “And he gave all that lump of money to Mehitable who never scarcely spoke to him, and only a little, meaching few stocks of the Hapwood-Diller Company to me. Oh, well, small favors thankfully received. The money’s very welcome every quarter.” Of course, Ethel was the recipient of a fairly comfortable salary. But they could not have lived so nicely as they did upon her weekly stipend only. Moreover, it was but recently that the girl was able to earn the amount at present paid her. “And there was a time,” pursued Mrs. Clayton on this particular evening, “when I came near selling the shares for a song.” She and Ethel were sitting, after the dinner dishes were cleared up, on the sheltered porch. “Grandon Fuller made me an offer for my stock. That was just before Mr. Barton was made manager, and people said the company was going to fail.” “Mr. Barton has done wonders,” declared the girl with admiration. “Oh, I don’t know,” responded her mother deprecatingly. “I suppose business just chanced to change. But it’s lucky we held on to our stock.”