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Main > Fairy tale > All authors > Frank Baum > Fairy tale "Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad"

Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad

He had made his vast fortune on the Pacific Coast and during his

years of busy activity had been practically forgotten by the Eastern

members of his family, who never had credited him with sufficient

ability to earn more than a precarious livelihood. But the man was

shrewd enough in a business way, although simple almost to childishness

in many other matters. When he returned, quite unheralded, to end his

days "at home" and employ his ample wealth to the best advantage, he for

a time kept his success a secret, and so learned much of the

dispositions and personal characteristics of his three nieces.

They were at that time visiting his unmarried sister, Jane, at her

estate at Elmhurst, whither they had been invited for the first time;

and in the race for Aunt Jane's fortune he watched the three girls

carefully and found much to admire in each one of them. Patsy Doyle,

however, proved exceptionally frank and genuine, and when Aunt Jane at

last died and it was found she had no estate to bequeath, Patsy proved

the one bright star in the firmament of disappointment. Supposing Uncle

John to be poor, she insisted upon carrying him to New York with her and

sharing with him the humble tenement room in which she lived with her

father--a retired veteran who helped pay the family expenses by keeping

books for a mercantile firm, while Patsy worked in a hair-dresser's

shop.

It was now that Uncle John proved a modern fairy godfather to Aunt

Jane's nieces--who were likewise his own nieces. The three girls had

little in common except their poverty, Elizabeth De Graf being the

daughter of a music teacher, in Cloverton, Ohio, while Louise Merrick

lived with her widowed mother in a social atmosphere of the second class

in New York, where the two women frankly intrigued to ensnare for Louise

a husband who had sufficient means to ensure both mother and daughter a

comfortable home. In spite of this worldly and unlovely ambition, which

their circumstances might partially excuse, Louise, who was but

seventeen, had many good and womanly qualities, could they have been

developed in an atmosphere uninfluenced by the schemes of her vain and

selfish mother.

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