e opened the little bags
they were filled with gold.

There was a paper with the money, written by the old miser, to say that
it was a codicil to his will, and that the money was all for Mrs. Wood.
Why he had not left it to her in the will itself seemed very puzzling,
but his lawyer (whom the Woods consulted about it) said that he always
did things in a very eccentric way, but generally for some sort of
reason, even if it were rather a freaky one, and that perhaps he thought
that the relations would be less spiteful at first if they did not know
about the money, and that Mrs. Wood would soon find it, if she used and
valued his old press.

I don't quite know whether there was any fuss with the relations about
this part of the bequest, but I suppose the lawyer managed it all right,
for the Woods got the money and gave up the school. But they kept the
old house, and bought some more land, and Walnut-tree Academy became
Walnut-tree Farm once more. And Cripple Charlie lived on with them, and
he was so happy, it really seemed as if my dear mother was right when
she said to my father, "I am so pleased, my dear, for that poor boy's
sake, I can hardly help crying. He's got two homes and two fathers and
mothers, where many a young man has none, as if to make good his
affliction to him."

It puzzles me, even now, to think how my father could have sent Jem and
me to Crayshaw's school. (Nobody ever called him Mr. Crayshaw except the
parents of pupils who lived at a distance. In the neighbourhood he and
his whole establishment were lumped under the one word _Crayshaw's_, and
as a farmer hard by once said to me, "Crayshaw's is universally
disrespected.")

I do not think it was merely because "Crayshaw's" was cheap that we were
sent there, though my father had so few reasons to give for his choice
that he quoted that among them. A man with whom he had had business
dealings (which gave him much satisfaction for some years, and more
dissatisfaction afterwards) did really, I think, persuade my father to
send us to this school, one evening when they were dining together.

Few things are harder to guess at than the grounds on which an
Englishman of my father's type "makes up his mind"; and yet the
question is an important one, for an idea once lodged in his head, a
conviction once as much his own as the family acres, and you will as
soon part him from the one as from the other. I have known little
matters of domestic improvements, in