Aunt Jane's Nieces
It depends on whether Aunt Jane leaves you anything in
her will."
"I hope she won't leave me a cent!" cried the boy, with sudden
fierceness. "I hate her, and will be glad when she is dead and out of
my way!"
"Kenneth--Kenneth, lad!"
"I hate her!" he persisted, with blazing eyes. "She has insulted me,
scorned me, humiliated me every moment since I have known her. I'll be
glad to have her die, and I don't want a cent of her miserable money."
"Money," remarked the old man, knocking the ashes from his pipe, "is
very necessary to one who is incompetent to earn his salt. And the
money she leaves you--if she really does leave you any--won't be
her's, remember, but your Uncle Tom's."
"Uncle Tom was good to my father," said the boy, softening.
"Well, Uncle Tom gave his money to Aunt Jane, whom he had expected
to marry; but he asked her to care for his relatives, and she'll
doubtless give you enough to live on. But the place will go to some
one else, and that means you must move on."
"Who will have Elmhurst?" asked the boy.
"One of your aunt's nieces, probably. She has three, it seems, all of
them young girls, and she has invited them to come here to visit her."
"Girls! Girls at Elmhurst?" cried the boy, shrinking back with a look
of terror in his eyes.
"To be sure. One of the nieces, it seems, refuses to come; but there
will be two of them to scramble for your aunt's affection."
"She has none," declared the boy.
"Or her money, which is the same thing. The one she likes the best
will get the estate."
Kenneth smiled, and with the change of expression his face lighted
wonderfully.
"Poor Aunt!" he said. "Almost I am tempted to be sorry for her. Two
girls--fighting one against the other for Elmhurst--and both fawning
before a cruel and malicious old woman who could never love anyone but
herself."
"And her flowers," suggested the lawyer.
"Oh, yes; and perhaps James. Tell me, why should she love James, who
is a mere gardener, and hate me?"
"James tends the flowers, and the flowers are Jane Merrick's very
life.
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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