s' that
could make a blighted flower of me because, while innocent as a babe
unborn, I'd been dragged through the courts by wicked enemies. My
enemies were pretty wicked; I stick to that. Cora Bewick, off living
abroad studying some strange religion, while her kind old pa was dying
at home, and she never once coming near him till he was under ground;
Idell Friebus, never coming into his room except with her nose wrinkled
up with disgust at the smell of disinfectants--or disgust at him, it was
none too plain which. They made a fine pair of daughters. But when it
came to fighting over the will, the lawyers on the Bewick side gave out
just what it was that a perfectly noble woman would have done in my
place of the old man's nurse. And my lawyers would have it that
everything that didn't accord with that ideal simply must be kept dark,
or public feeling would go against us. It's that that made it so
nasty--pretending, and avoiding this, and keeping off the other. It
amounted to lying, no matter what they said. But they told me if I
didn't do as my counsel instructed me, the result would be the worst lie
of all. I should be believed guilty of just that undue influence I was
accused of, and lose the money into the bargain. So I had to hedge and
shuffle and mislead.... And me under oath to tell the truth! You needn't
wonder if I'm sick still at the thought of it, or wonder that I'd like
to forget it. The truth was I _did_ know beforehand the Judge meant
to leave me one fourth of his money, and I was tickled to death. I
gloried in it. I loved to imagine the rage it would throw his wicked
daughters in, and his mean little miserable son-in-law. I was glad,
besides, out and out, to think I should have the money. I plain wanted
it, I did. Maybe a real noble woman wouldn't have. Maybe it showed a
degraded nature. Well, that's the way it was. Sometimes I feel disposed
to be ashamed of it, but mostly I don't. For one thing, I felt then and
I feel now, I deserved that money by a long sight more than those
bad-hearted girls of his. I was a comfort to Judge Bewick. I won't say I
earned the money, it was too much: but there were some hours of my
tending him, poor soul, when it did seem to me a nurse came pretty near
earning anything the patient could afford to pay. All the same, I would
have done what I did for the old boy if he hadn't had a cent, I had so
much respect for him, as much as for my own father, and I felt I owed so
much to his