ring good news as well as bad;
though she had always been careful that the small yearly remittance
should be promptly sent, and was impatient to receive the formal
acknowledgment of it, which she instantly took pains to destroy. She
sometimes in these days thought about making her will; there was no
hurry about it, but it would be only fair to provide for her nearest
of kin, while she was always certain that she should not let all her
money and the old house with its handsome furnishings go into such
unworthy hands. It was a very hard question to settle, and she thought
of it as little as possible, and was sure there was nothing to prevent
her living a great many years yet. She loved her old home dearly, and
was even proud of it, and had always taken great care of the details
of its government. She never had been foolish enough to make away with
her handsome mahogany furniture, and to replace it with cheaper and
less comfortable chairs and tables, as many of her neighbors had done,
and had taken an obstinate satisfaction all through the years when it
seemed quite out of date, in insisting upon the polishing of the fine
wood and the many brass handles, and of late she had been reaping a
reward for her constancy. It had been a marvel to certain progressive
people that a person of her comfortable estate should be willing to
reflect that there was not a marble-topped table in her house, until
it slowly dawned upon them at last that she was mistress of the finest
house in town. Outwardly, it was painted white and stood close upon
the street, with a few steep front steps coming abruptly down into the
middle of the narrow sidewalk; its interior was spacious and very
imposing, not only for the time it was built in the last century, but
for any other time. Miss Prince's ancestors had belonged to some of
the most distinguished among the colonial families, which fact she
neither appeared to remember nor consented to forget; and, as often
happened in the seaport towns of New England, there had been one or
two men in every generation who had followed the sea. Her own father
had been among the number, and the closets of the old house were well
provided with rare china and fine old English crockery that would
drive an enthusiastic collector to distraction. The carved woodwork of
the railings and wainscotings and cornices had been devised by
ingenious and patient craftsmen, and the same portraits and old
engravings hung upon the walls t