was joined
with. "How can people turn their backs on people so?" She broke off
with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion.

No: they could not understand. "Desire was just queerer than ever,"
they said. "It was such a pity, at her age. What would she be if she
lived to be as old as Uncle Titus himself?" Mrs. Megilp sighed,
long-sufferingly.

Mrs. Froke lived on in the gray parlor; Hazel Ripwinkley ran in and
out; she hardly knew which was most home now, Greenley or Aspen
Street. She and Desire were together in everything; in the bakery
and laundry and industrial asylum that Luclarion Grapp's missionary
work was taking shape in; in Chapel classes and teachers meetings;
in a Wednesday evening Read-and-Talk, as they called it, that they
had gathered some dozen girls and young women into, for which the
dear old library was open weekly; in walks to and fro about the city
"on errands;" in long plans and consultations, now, since so much
power had been laid on their young heads and hands.

Uncle Oldways had made "the strangest will that ever was," if that
were not said almost daily of men's last disposals. Out of the two
sister's families, the Ripwinkleys and the Ledwiths, he had chosen
these two girls,--children almost,--whom he declared his "next of
kin, in a sense that the Lord and they would know;" and to them he
left, in not quite equal shares, the bulk of his large property; the
income of each portion to be severally theirs,--Desire's without
restriction, Hazel's under her mother's guardianship, until each
should come to the age of twenty-five years. If either of the two
should die before that age, her share should devolve upon the other;
if neither should survive it,--then followed a division among
persons and charities, such, as he said, with his best knowledge,
and the Lord's help, he felt himself at the moment of devising moved
to direct. At twenty-five he counseled each heir to make, promptly,
her own legal testament, searching, meanwhile, by the light given
her in the doing of her duty, for whom or whatsoever should be shown
her to be truly, and of the will of God--not man, her own "next of
kin."

"For needful human form," he said, in conclusion, "I name Frances
Ripwinkley executrix of this my will; but the Lord Himself shall be
executor, above and through all; may He give unto you a right
judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in his holy comfort!"

Some people even laughed at suc