He
sent the girl to a good school in Applegate, I remember, and there was
a bequest of some sort, I believe--something that she comes into on her
twenty-first birthday."
"She isn't twenty-one then, is she?"
"I don't know, Jonathan, I really can't remember."
"Perhaps Aunt Kesiah can tell me something about her?"
"Oh, she can and she will--but Kesiah is so violent in all her opinions!
I had to ask her never to mention Brother Jonathan's name to me because
she made me quite ill once by some dreadful hints she let fall about
him."
She leaned back wearily as if the conversation had exhausted her, while
the peacock firescreen slipped from her hand and dropped on the white
fur rug at her feet.
"If you'll call Kesiah, Jonathan, I'll go upstairs for a rest," she said
gently, yet with a veiled reproach. "The journey tired me, but I forgot
it in the pleasure of seeing you."
All contrition at once, he hastily summoned Kesiah from the storeroom,
and between them, with several solicitous maids in attendance, they
carried the fragile little lady up to her chamber, where a fire of
resinous pine was burning in the big colonial fireplace.
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