ion.

"You ought to do it, Lois," he said. "I mean to do the right thing by
her myself. If I should die to-night, Phil would be taken care of."

"That's like you, Amzi, but it isn't necessary. I want to set aside one
hundred thousand for Phil. I'd like to make a trust fund of it, and let
her have the income from now on, and turn over the principal when she's
thirty, say. How does that strike you?"

"It's splendid, Lois. By George, it's grand!"

He blew his nose violently and wiped his eyes. And then his humor was
touched again. Phil, the long-unmothered, the Main Street romp, the
despair of sighing aunts, coming in for a hundred thousand dollars! And
from the mother whom those intolerant, snobbish sisters had execrated.
He was grateful that he had lived to see this day.

"You've been fine to Phil, and I appreciate it, Amzi. She's told me all
about it; the money you offered her and all that; and how you've stood
by her. Those dear sisters of mine have undoubtedly worked me hard as an
awful example. If they hadn't painted me so black, the dear beautiful
child wouldn't have warmed to me as she has."

"If the girls knew you had all that money, Lois, it would brace 'em up a
good deal. It's a funny thing about this funny old world, how the
scarletest sins fade away into pale pink at the jingle of money."

This bit of philosophy seemed not to interest her; she was thinking of
something else, humming softly. Her sins were evidently so little in her
mind that she paid no heed to his remark or the confusion that covered
him when he realized that he had been guilty of a tactless and
ungracious speech.

"Mrs. King called on me this afternoon, the dear old soul."

"You don't say!"

"I do, indeed. She put on her best clothes and drove up in the old
family chariot. She hasn't changed a bit."

Amzi sat pigeon-toed. Mrs. John Newman King, whose husband had been
United States Senator and who still paid an annual visit to Washington,
where the newspapers interviewed her as to her recollections of Lincoln,
was given to frank, blunt speech as Amzi well knew. It was wholly
possible that she had called on Lois to administer a gratuitous
chastisement, and if she had done so, all Montgomery would know of it.

"Don't worry! She was as nice as pie. Josie had kindly gone to see her
to tell her the 'family' had warned me away; the 'family' wanted her to
know, you know. Didn't want an old and valued friend like the widow of
John Newman