“Yes—­there are the Wilmots, too,” said Hiram absently.

“That’s another form of the same disease,” Henrietta went on.  “Did you know General Wilmot?”

“He was a fine man,” said Hiram, “one of the founders of this town, and he made a fortune out of it.  He got overbearing, and what he thought was proud, toward the end of his life.  But he had a good heart and worked for all he had—­honest work.”

“And he brought his family up to be real down-East gentlemen and ladies,” resumed Henrietta.  “And look at ’em.  They lost the money, because they were too gentlemanly and too ladylike to work to hold on to it.  And there they live in the big house, half-starved.  Why, really, Mr. Ranger, they don’t have enough to eat.  And they dress in clothes that have been in the family for a generation.  They make their underclothes out of old bed linen.  And the grass on their front lawns is three feet high, and the moss and weeds cover and pry up the bricks of their walks.  They’re too ‘proud’ to work and too poor to hire.  How much have they borrowed from you?”

“I don’t know,” said Hiram.  “Not much.”

“I know better—­and you oughtn’t to have lent them a cent.  Yesterday old Wilmot was hawking two of his grandfather’s watches about.  And all the Wilmots have got brains, just as our family has.  Nothing wrong with either of us, but that stream Dory Hargrave was talking about.”

“There’s John Dumont,” mused Ranger.

“Yes—­he is an exception.  But what’s he doing with what his father left him?  I don’t let them throw dust in my eyes with his philanthropy as they call it.  The plain truth is he’s a gambler and a thief, and he uses what his father left him to be gambler and thief on the big scale, and so keep out of the penitentiary—­’finance,’ they call it.  If he’d been poor, he’d have been in jail long ago—­no, he wouldn’t—­he’d have done differently.  It was the money that started him wrong.”

“A great deal of good can be done with money,” said Hiram.

“Can it?” demanded Mrs. Fred.  “It don’t look that way to me.  I’m full of this, for I was hauling my Alfred over the coals this very morning”—­she laughed—­“for being what I’ve made him, for doing what I’d do in his place—­for being like my father and my brothers.  It seems to me, precious little of the alleged good that’s done with wealth is really good; and what little isn’t downright bad hides the truth from people.  Talk about the good money does!  What does it amount to—­the good that’s good, and the good that’s rotten bad?  What does it all amount to beside the good that having to work does?  People that have to work hard are usually honest and have sympathy and affection and try to amount to something.  And if they are bad, why at least they can’t hurt anybody but themselves very much, where a John Dumont or a Skeffington can injure hundreds—­thousands.  Take your own case, Mr. Ranger.  Your money has never done you any good.  It was your hard work.  All your money has ever done has been—­Do you think your boy and girl will be as good a man and woman, as useful and creditable to the community, as you and Cousin Ellen?”