"

"Not yet, why do you ask?"

She took a chair and seated herself with her back to the light. "I will
tell you why," she said. "I have been thinking over what you said the
other day, and I begin to see that you were right, when you said it was
time for Walter to be sent from home; I know him too well, not to see
that for him, it would be waste of time and talents, to go on plodding
as he is doing now, in this narrow sphere of action. If he is ever to
attain the fall development of which he is capable, we must transplant
him to a more congenial soil. However, I am aware that you would find
it hard to keep him in a strange place, unless he were to earn his own
livelihood by his present trade; and that would be hard on him, for he
takes no pleasure in it, and will take still less, if you send him
among strangers."

She paused, for her voice was failing her; he stood at the other
window, looking away from her, and drawing upon the vapoury panes with
his finger.

"Brother-in-law," she began again: "I have just done a thing without
your knowledge, that I hope you will approve of, as it is for Walter's
good. As I was walking home just now, I thought over all those long
years we have lived together, and I confess I have not been so friendly
with you as I should have been, to make our lives pleasanter to both. I
am sorry for it now. There were some things I never could forget,
although they were past and over, and we know that no one human being
has any right to judge another.

"With regard to Walter, I have not so much to reproach myself. I did my
duty by him, as far as I saw it; and I see that I would not be doing it
now, if I were to keep him at home, merely because I find it hard to
part from him. So it occurred to me, as the best plan for us all, that
I could give him an independence, by making him my heir, as a mother
should her only son. Don't mistake me, I am not thinking of dying--only
of making my will; and as women are ignorant in such matters, as soon
as I had made up my mind, I went straight to the proper authority,
Dr. Hansen, and asked him what would be the surest way of making a
will--not only with a sound mind, but a sound body--and of laying down
the burthen of one's thalers in the most legal form."

"You spoke to Hansen about this?"

"I did; and found him quite willing to assist me. I had a deed of gift
drawn up, which he will bring this evening, written out in proper form.
I also begged him to join