98
While we were talking about this institution and some of the refugees it sheltered, Myra said suddenly: “I wonder if you know about a clause concerning me in that foundation? It states that at any time the founder’s niece, Myra Driscoll Henshawe, is to be received into the institution, kept without charge, and paid an allowance of ten dollars a week for pocket money until the time of her death. How like the old Satan that was! Be sure when he dictated that provision to his lawyer, he thought to himself: ‘She’d roll herself into the river first, the brach!’ And then he probably thought better of me, and maybe died with some decent feeling for me in his heart. We were very proud of each other, and if he’d lived till now, I’d go back to him and ask his pardon; because I know what it is to be old and lonely and disappointed. Yes, and because as we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so mis-
