An expression of suffering patience came into the old gentleman's face, and he averted his gaze as he had done before the looming countenance of Kesiah. "Your uncle rarely spoke to me of her," he answered, "but I have reason to know that her existence was a constant source of distress to him. He was most anxious both to protect your mother and to provide generously for the future of Janet's daughter. "Yet I understand that there was no mention of her in his will." "This omission was entirely on your mother's account. The considerable property--representing a third of his entire estate--which was left in trust to me for a secret purpose, will go, of course, to the girl. In the last ten years this property has practically doubled in value, and Molly will take possession of the income from it when she reaches her twenty-first birthday. The one condition is that at Reuben's death she shall live with your aunt." "Ah," said Jonathan, "I begin to see." "At the time, of course, he believed that your mother would survive him only a few months, and his efforts to shield her from any painful discoveries extended even after his death. His wish was that the girl should be well educated and prepared for any change in her circumstances--but unfortunately she has proved to be rather a wilful young person, and it has been impossible entirely to fulfil his intentions with regard to her. Ah, he wasn't wise always, poor Jonathan, but I never doubted that he meant well at bottom, however things may have appeared. His anxiety in the case of your mother was very beautiful, and if his plans seem to have miscarried, we must lay the blame after all, on the quality of his judgment, not of his heart." "And the girl will be twenty-one next April, I am told?" "Her birthday is the seventeenth, exactly ten years from the date of Jonathan's death." CHAPTER VIII SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate, stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable hearth in the public room. The genius of personality had enabled Betsey Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating to the chance comer was that he never came. By combining a store with a public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as the absence of guests. "Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim.