their
voyage in the last Burgundy from the little wine bin. If anything were
needed to place Margarita's father in our estimations, that Burgundy
would have done it! After the sweet course of jellied pancakes that
Roger had taught Caliban, we fell upon the cigars I had brought, and
when Margarita, an apt pupil, had sugared my demi-tasse to my liking,
I reached into my pocket and drew out the Russia leather case. My
fingers trembled like a boy's as I took out the pearl and clasped it
around her beautiful neck, above the soft black handkerchief.

"If this is not your first wedding present, Mrs. Bradley, I shall be
furiously angry," I said with mock severity, to keep down the lump in
my throat, for I was absurdly excited.

"Jerry, you extravagant old donkey, what do you mean by this?" Roger
cried huskily, "I never heard of such a thing!" While Margarita, for
the first time in our acquaintance a daughter of Eve, ran up to her
mirror. She would have been as pleased, I think, with a necklace of
iridescent seashells--wherein she differed widely from Miss L----n
R----l, as Roger and I agreed.

We talked, of course, of Uncle Winthrop and the old days, of his
loving interest in me, the slender little chap with the dead
soldier-father, who had taken long walks up and down narrow old Winter
Street with him, and mailed his letters, and fenced with his sword,
and listened by the hour to his tales of rainy bivouac and last
redoubt, of precious drops of brandy to a dying comrade and brave
loans of army blankets in the cold dawn. We wondered at the
extraordinary chance which had kept the old portfolio, with its worn
leather edges that I remembered so well, hidden during the two years
that had elapsed since his death, and what secretive instinct had led
him to put his last will and testament there. We marvelled at the
sagacity which had led him to drop hints as to the existence of such a
document so effectively that the family had felt themselves bound to
hold the property intact for three years, to give every possible
chance of finding it, and had spent many useless dollars in the search
for the old servants who were believed (and rightly, as the event
proved) to have witnessed it. Our friendship had been more than
ordinary in its strength and real sympathy; one of those attractions
that laugh at disparity of years and absence of any tie of kinship,
and, indeed, up to his death I had been far closer to him than Roger
ever was. Dear