l question out: Didn't Doctor Lavendar think it
might be bad for Johnny to visit Mr. and Mrs. Robertson? "They're very
rich, you know," Miss Lydia warned him, piteously.

"They've taken a fancy to him, have they?" Doctor Lavendar asked. She
nodded. The old man meditated. "Lydia," he said at last, "you are so
rich, and they're so poor, I'd be charitable, if I were you."

So she was charitable. And for the next three or four years Johnny went
away for his good times, and old Miss Lydia stayed at home and had very
bad times for fear that Mr. and Mrs. Robertson might suddenly turn into
Johnny's father and mother! Then the father and mother would come to Old
Chester in the summer and have their bad times, for fear that Miss Lydia
would "influence" Johnny against Mr. and Mrs. Robertson. (We got to
quite like the Robertsons, though we didn't see much of them. "Pity they
had no children," said Old Chester; "all that Smith money going
begging!")

The Smith money certainly went begging, so far as Johnny was concerned.
Every time his father and mother tried to spend it on him Miss Lydia put
her little frightened will between the boy and his grandfather's
fortune. "Boys can't accept presents, Johnny, except from relations, you
know," she would tell him; "it isn't nice." And Johnny, thinking of the
gun or the pony or what not, would stick out his lips and sigh and say
no, he "s'posed not." As a result of such remarks he developed as
healthy a pride as one could hope for in a lad, and by the time he was
eighteen he was hot with embarrassment when Mrs. Robertson tried to
force things upon him.

"No, ma'am," he would say, awkwardly. "I--I can't take any presents."

"Why not?" she would demand, deeply hurt.

"Well, you know, you are not a relation," Johnny would say; and his
mother would rush up to her room and pace up and down, up and down, and
cry until she could hardly see.

"She's robbed us of our own child!" she used to tell her husband.

As for Johnny, he told Miss Lydia once that Mrs. Robertson was kind,
and all that, but she was a nuisance.

"Oh, Johnny, I wouldn't say _that_, dear. She's been nice to you."

"What makes her?" said Johnny, curiously. "Why is she always gushing
round?"

"Well, she likes you, Johnny."

Johnny grinned. "I don't see why. I'm afraid I'm not awfully polite to
her. She was telling me she'd give me anything on earth I wanted; made
me feel like a fool!" said Johnny, "and I said, 'Aunty gives