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Updated: May 6, 2025
"Eh?" "You are not formal here in East Westland, are you?" "No," replied Sylvia, "we ain't formal. So you want to put on this?" "Yes, I think I will." Sylvia laid the tea-gown on the bed, and turned to the trunk again. "You know, of course, that Aunt Abrahama and mamma were estranged for years before mamma died," said Rose.
"I guess she spent that five hundred on her wedding fix," said Sylvia. "It was a queer will," stammered Henry. "I think the old man always looked at Abrahama as his son and heir," said the lawyer. "She was named for him, and his father before him, you know. I always thought the poor old girl deserved the lion's share for being saddled with such a name, anyhow."
Then Henry spoke, stammeringly: "I never knew just how much of an income Abrahama had," he said. "Well," replied the lawyer, "I must say not much not as much as I wish, for your sakes. You see, old Abraham had a lot of that railroad stock that went to smash ten years ago, and Abrahama lost a good deal.
Here is Abrahama White's last will and testament. I found it in a box in the garret with some letters. Abrahama wrote letters to her sister asking her to forgive her, and telling her how sorry she was, and begging her to come home, but she never sent one of them. There they all were. She had tried to salve her conscience as I have tried to salve mine. She couldn't do it, either.
But when they followed Martin Barnes and his assistants into the parlor, where Abrahama White was laid in state, all the shameful joy passed from their faces. The old woman in her last bed was majestic. The dead face was grand, compelling to other than earthly considerations. Henry and Sylvia forgot the dead woman's little store which she had left behind her.
She chattered to her husband like a school-girl. "Oh, Henry," said she, "you don't know what we've got! I never dreamed poor Abrahama had such beautiful things. I have been up in the garret looking over things, and there's one chest up there packed with the most elegant clothes. I never saw such dresses in my life."
I don't believe there's a family anywhere around that hasn't got some dreadful thing in it to leak out, when you don't expect it, in children. Sometimes it only leaks in a straight line, and sometimes it leaks sidewise. You never know. Now here's my family. I was a White, you know, like your aunt Abrahama. There's consumption in our family, the worst kind.
I have known it all belonged to Rose Fletcher, Abrahama White's own niece. After Rose came to live with us, I tried to put salve on my conscience by doing every single thing I could for her. When my husband went to work again, I spent every cent that came from her aunt's property on Rose. I gave her all her aunt's jewelry.
She thought, in spite of herself, of the good-fortune which was to befall them. She imagined herself mistress of the old White homestead. They would, of course, rent their own little cottage and go to live in the big house. She imagined herself looking through the treasures which Abrahama would leave behind her then a monstrous loathing of herself seized her.
There was something in this air which gave the inhaler the certainty of victory, the courage of battle and of unassailable youth. Even old people, pausing to notice the streamer of crape on Abrahama White's door, felt triumphant and undaunted. It did not seem conceivable, upon such a day, that that streamer would soon flaunt for them. The streamer was rusty.
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