y hadn't, of course, seen
anything of them since Captain St. Leger died--the circle to which we
belong don't care for poor relations--and was explaining where Miss
MacKelpie came in. She must have been a sort of nursery governess, for
Mrs. St. Leger once told him that she helped her to educate the child.

"Then, father," I said, "if she helped to educate the child she ought to
have been called Miss MacSkelpie!"

When my first-cousin-once-removed, Rupert, was twelve years old, his
mother died, and he was in the dolefuls about it for more than a year.
Miss MacKelpie kept on living with him all the same. Catch her quitting!
That sort don't go into the poor-house when they can keep out! My
father, being Head of the Family, was, of course, one of the trustees,
and his uncle Roger, brother of the testator, another. The third was
General MacKelpie, a poverty-stricken Scotch laird who had a lot of
valueless land at Croom, in Ross-shire. I remember father gave me a new
ten-pound note when I interrupted him whilst he was telling me of the
incident of young St. Leger's improvidence by remarking that he was in
error as to the land. From what I had heard of MacKelpie's estate, it
was productive of one thing; when he asked me "What?" I answered
"Mortgages!" Father, I knew, had bought, not long before, a lot of them
at what a college friend of mine from Chicago used to call "cut-throat"
price. When I remonstrated with my father for buying them at all, and so
injuring the family estate which I was to inherit, he gave me an answer,
the astuteness of which I have never forgotten.

"I did it so that I might keep my hand on the bold General, in case he
should ever prove troublesome. And if the worst should ever come to the
worst, Croom is a good country for grouse and stags!" My father can see
as far as most men!

When my cousin--I shall call him cousin henceforth in this record, lest
it might seem to any unkind person who might hereafter read it that I
wished to taunt Rupert St. Leger with his somewhat obscure position, in
reiterating his real distance in kinship with my family--when my cousin,
Rupert St. Leger, wished to commit a certain idiotic act of financial
folly, he approached my father on the subject, arriving at our estate,
Humcroft, at an inconvenient time, without permission, not having had
even the decent courtesy to say he was coming. I was then a little chap
of six years old, but I could not help noticing his m