as greatly pleased at this, and so he welcomed his new mother
very eagerly, thinking all the time, of course, of his new playfellow.

The lady my grandfather married was a widow. Her husband, Richard
Tresidder, had been a lawyer in Falmouth, but he had died of cholera
about four years after my grandmother died. Her little boy, too, was
called Richard, or Dick, as they named him for short, and in a little
while the two boys became friends.

Now the widow of lawyer Tresidder brought my grandfather no property at
all, not a pennypiece, but she brought a great deal of discord instead.
She was always jealous for her son, and she hated my father. The very
sight of him used to vex her, especially as after several years she did
not bear my grandfather a son. There were three daughters born, but no
son, which greatly disappointed my grandfather, and made his wife
exceedingly bitter toward my father.

As years went by it seemed to be the great purpose of her life to cause
quarrels between the father and son, and at the same time to show up the
excellencies of her own son, Richard Tresidder. I suppose the wisest and
best men are clay in the hands of women; at any rate, such has been my
experience in life, especially if that woman is clever, and has a will
of her own, which latter quality few women are short of. Anyhow, after
many years, she succeeded in setting my grandfather against his only son
Jasper. How she managed it I don't know, for my grandfather always had
the name for being a just man, but then, as I said, what can a man do
when a woman gets hold of him? Just before my father was twenty-one this
widow of Tresidder got her husband to make a new will. She persuaded him
to let her husband's brother be present when Mr. Trefry, the old family
lawyer, was writing the document, and a good many hard words passed even
then.

You see, Mr. Trefry couldn't bear to see my father defrauded, and yet he
had no right to interfere. The upshot was that the will gave my father
the sum of L500, while all the Pennington estates were to be held in
trust for Richard Tresidder. This of course seems very strange, but it
goes to show how a woman can twist a man around her finger when she sets
out to do it. There was a clause in the will, however, which my
grandfather, in spite of James Tresidder, who was also a lawyer, would
have inserted. I think the old man's love for justice, and perhaps his
love for his son, caused him to have a mind of hi