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had put her toilet articles and some linen into a travelling-bag, and thrown it out of the back window to one of the boys stationed under an apple-tree.
“I’ll never forget the sight of her, coming down that walk and leaving a great fortune behind her,” said Aunt Lydia. “I had gone out to join the others before she came—she preferred to leave the house alone. We girls were all in the sleighs and the boys stood in the snow holding the horses. We had begun to think she had weakened, or maybe gone to the old man to try to move him. But we saw by the lights behind when the front door opened and shut, and here she came, with her head high, and that quick little bouncing step of hers. Your Uncle Rob lifted her into the sleigh, and off we went. And that hard old man was as good as his word. Her name wasn’t mentioned in his will. He left it all to the Catholic Church and to institutions.”
“But they’ve been happy, anyhow?” I sometimes asked her.
