the
great house, tended merely by servants and suffered to play in those
quarters of the ample grounds which Aunt Jane did not herself visit. The
neglect which Kenneth had suffered and his lonely life had influenced
the youth's temperament, and he was far from being an agreeable
companion at the time Aunt Jane summoned her three nieces to Elmhurst in
order to choose one of them as her heiress. These girls, bright, cheery
and wholesome as they were, penetrated the boy's reserve and drew him
out of his misanthropic moods. They discovered that he had remarkable
talent as an artist, and encouraged him to draw and paint, something he
had long loved to do in secret.

Then came the great surprise of the boy's life, which changed his
condition from one of dependency into affluence. Aunt Jane died and it
was discovered that she had no right to transfer the estate to one of
her nieces, because by the terms of his uncle's deed to her the property
reverted on her death to Kenneth himself. Louise Merrick, Beth DeGraf
and Patsy Doyle, the three nieces, were really glad that the boy
inherited Elmhurst, and returned to their eastern homes with the most
cordial friendship existing between them all.

Kenneth was left the master of Elmhurst and possessor of considerable
wealth besides, and at first he could scarcely realize his good fortune
or decide how to take advantage of it. He had one good and helpful
friend, an old lawyer named Watson, who had not only been a friend of
his uncle, and the confidant of Aunt Jane for years, but had taken an
interest in the lonely boy and had done his best to make his life
brighter and happier.

When Kenneth became a landed proprietor Mr. Watson was appointed his
guardian, and the genial old lawyer abandoned the practice of law and
henceforth devoted himself to his ward's welfare and service.

They made a trip to Europe together, where Kenneth studied the pictures
of the old masters and obtained instruction from some of the foremost
living artists of the old world.

It was while they were abroad, a year before the time of this story,
that the boy met Aunt Jane's three nieces again. They were "doing"
Europe in company with a wealthy bachelor uncle, John Merrick, a
generous, kind-hearted and simple-minded old gentleman who had taken the
girls "under his wing," as he expressed it, and had really provided for
their worldly welfare better than Aunt Jane, his sister, could have
done.

This "Uncle John