MRS. WHITNEY NEGOTIATES

The Rangers’ neighbors saw the visits of Hargrave and Torrey.  Immediately a rumor of a bequest to Tecumseh was racing through the town and up the Bluffs and through the fashionable suburb.  It arrived at Point Helen, the seat of the Whitneys, within an hour after Torrey left Ranger.  It had accumulated confirmatory detail by that time—­the bequest was large; was very large; was half his fortune—­and the rest of the estate was to go to the college should Arthur and Adelaide die childless.

Mrs. Whitney lost no time.  At half-past four she was seated in the same chair in which Hargrave and Torrey had sat.  It was not difficult to bring up the subject of the two marriages, which were doubly to unite the houses and fortunes of Ranger and Whitney—­the marriages of Arthur and Janet, of Ross and Adelaide.  “And, of course,” said Mrs. Whitney, “we all want the young people started right.  I don’t believe children ought to feel dependent on their parents.  It seems to me that puts filial and parental love on a very low plane.  Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” said Hiram.

“The young people ought to feel that their financial position is secure.  And, as you and Ellen and Charles and I have lived for our children, have toiled to raise them above the sordid cares and anxieties of life, we ought to complete our work now and make them—­happy.”

Hiram did not speak, though she gave him ample time.

“So,” pursued Mrs. Whitney, “I thought I wouldn’t put off any longer talking about what Charles and I have had in mind some months.  Ross and Janet will soon be here, and I know all four of the children are anxious to have the engagements formally completed.”

“Completed?” said Hiram.

“Yes,” reaffirmed Matilda.  “Of course they can’t be completed until we parents have done our share.  You and Ellen want to know that Arthur and Adelaide won’t be at the mercy of any reverse in business Charles might have—­or of any caprice which might influence him in making his will.  And Charles and I want to feel the same way as to our Ross and Janet.”

“Yes,” said Hiram.  “I see.”  A smile of stern irony roused his features from their repose into an expressiveness that made Mrs. Whitney exceedingly uncomfortable—­but the more resolute.

“Charles is willing to be liberal both in immediate settlement and in binding himself in the matter of his will,” she went on.  “He often says, ’I don’t want my children to be impatient for me to die.  I want to make ‘em feel they’re getting, if anything, more because I’m alive.’”

A long pause, then Hiram said:  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“That’s your way,” said Matilda, as if the matter were settled.  And she smiled her softest and sweetest.  But Hiram saw only the glitter in her cold brown eyes, a glitter as hard as the sheen of her henna-stained hair.

“No,” said he emphatically, “that’s not my way.  That’s the broad and easy way that leads to destruction.  Ellen and I,” he went on, his excitement showing only in his lapses into dialect, “we hain’t worked all our lives so that our children’ll be shiftless idlers, settin’ ‘round, polishin’ their fingernails, and thinkin’ up foolishness and breedin’ fools.”