amily. They were heiresses,
finally, to the place and the farm, to the furniture that was made when
folk seasoned their wood before they worked it, to a diamond brooch
which they wore by turns, besides two diamond rings, and two black lace
shawls, that had belonged to their mother and their Auntie Jean, long
since departed thither where neither moth nor rust corrupt the true
riches.

As to the incomings of Lingborough, "It was nobody's business but their
own," as Miss Betty said to the lawyer who was their man of business,
and whom they consulted on little matters of rent and repairs at as much
length, and with as much formal solemnity, as would have gone elsewhere
to the changing hands of half a million of money. Without violating
their confidence, however, we may say that the estate paid its way, kept
them in silk stockings, and gave them new tabbinet dresses once in three
years. It supplied their wants the better that they had inherited house
plenishing from their parents, "Which they thanked their stars was not
made of tag-rag, and would last their time," and that they were quite
content with an old home and old neighbours, and never desired to change
the grand air that blew about their native hills for worse, in order to
be poisoned with bad butter, and make the fortunes of extortionate
lodging-house keepers.

The rental of Lingborough did more. How much more the little old ladies
did not know themselves, and no one else shall know, till that which was
done in secret is proclaimed from the housetops.

For they had had a religious scruple, founded upon a literal reading of
the scriptural command that a man's left hand should not know what has
right hand gives in alms, and this scruple had been ingeniously set at
rest by the parson, who, failing in an attempt to explain the force of
Eastern hyperbole to the little ladies' satisfaction, had said that Miss
Betty, being the elder, and the head of the house, might be likened to
the right hand, and Miss Kitty, as the younger, to the left, and that if
they pursued their good works without ostentation, or desiring the
applause even of each other, the spirit of the injunction would be
fulfilled.

The parson was a good man and a clever. He had (as Miss Betty justly
said) a very spiritual piety. But he was also gifted with much
shrewdness in dealing with the various members of his flock. And his
word was law to the sisters.

Thus it came about that the little ladies' cha