Mrs. Field stood her ground stanchly.  “No, I wa’n’t,” she went on.  “An’ I’ll tell you why.  I’m goin’ to have that fifteen hundred dollars of your poor father’s earnin’s that I lent your uncle out of this property, an’ this is all the way to do it, an’ I’m goin’ to do it.”

“I thought,” gasped Lois—­“I thought maybe it belonged to us anyway if Aunt Esther was dead.”

“It didn’t.  The money was all left to old Mr. Maxwell’s niece in case Esther died first.”

“Couldn’t you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred dollars?  Wouldn’t he have given you some?  O mother!”

“I was goin’ to if he hadn’t took me for her, but it wouldn’t have done any good.  They wouldn’t have been obliged to pay it, an’ folks ain’t fond of payin’ over money when they ain’t obliged to.  I’d been a fool to have asked him after he took me for her.”

“Then—­you’d got this—­all planned?”

Her mother took her up sharply.

“No, I hadn’t got it all planned,” said she.  “I don’t deny it come into my head.  I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I didn’t go so far as to plan it; there needn’t anybody say I did.”

“You ain’t going to take the money?”

“I’m goin’ to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it.”

“Mother, you ain’t going to stay here, and make folks think you’re Aunt Esther?”

“Yes, I am.”

Then all Lois’ horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry—­“O mother!”

Mrs. Field never flinched.  “If you want to act so an’ feel so about it, you can,” said she.  “Your mother is some older than you, an’ she knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her.  I’ve thought it all over.  That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor father worked hard to earn.  I lent it to your uncle Edward, an’ he lost it.  I never see a dollar of it afterward.  He never paid me a cent of interest money.  It ain’t anything more’n fair that I should be paid for it out of his father’s property.  If poor Esther had lived, the money’d gone to her, an’ she’d paid me fast enough.  Now the way’s opened for me to get it, I ain’t goin’ to let it go.  Talk about it’s bein’ right, if it ain’t right to stoop down an’ pick up anybody’s just dues, I don’t know what right is, for my part.”

“Mother!”

“What say?”

“You ain’t going to live here in this house, and not go back to Green River?”

“I don’t see any need of goin’ back to Green River.  This is a ’nough sight prettier place than Green River.  Now you’re down here, I don’t see any sense in layin’ out money to go back at all.  Mandy’ll send our things down.”

“You don’t mean to stay right along here in this house, and not go back to Green River at all?”

“I don’t see why it ain’t jest as well.  You’d better take off your things an’ lay down a little while on that sofa there, an’ get rested.”

Lois seldom cried, but she burst out now in a piteous wail.  “O mother,” sobbed she, “what does it mean?  I can’t—­ What does it mean?  Oh, I’m so frightened!  Mother, you frighten me so!  What does it mean?”