He was always promising to come
home--in the letters. That used to make her so much better," she
explained naively. "And sometimes she'd be able to go out in the yard
and fuss with her flowers, after one like that. But he never came, and
so she got the notion that he was wild and a spendthrift. I suppose he
was, or he'd have written, or something. She had lots and lots of money
and property, you know.
"Well," Josephine took one of Ford's hand and patted it reassuringly,
"she got the notion that I must marry Frank, when he came home. I tried
to reason her out of that, and it only made her worse. It grew on her,
and I got so I couldn't bear to write any more letters, and that made it
worse still. She made a will that I must marry Frank within a year after
she died, or he wouldn't get anything but a hundred dollars--and she was
worth thousands and thousands." Josephine snuggled closer. "She was
shrewd, too. I was not to get anything except a few trinkets. And if we
didn't marry, the money would all go to an old ladies' home.
"So, when she died, I felt as if I ought to do something, you see. It
didn't seem right to let him lose the property, even if he wouldn't
write to his mother.
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