would have changed
my plans in regard to them. It's a very silly thing you are doing with
them, in my opinion, but I'm glad you have spirit enough to stick to
your own mind. Now, my dear, don't be angry with me. Understand that
I have come to interfere in your plans in no way at all. It's not my
purpose to use your poverty and your need for my money as a force by
which to tyrannize over you. I had these thoughts in mind when I came
here to-day--on an old man's whimsical impulse: I wished, first of all,
to put a period to the unfriendliness that has existed between us all
these years; I wished to see my nieces, and I wished, at the same
time--and in order to avoid any false attitude on your part or on my
own--to have it clearly understood that you must not expect any
financial assistance from me. Live out your own lives--think out your
own problems--make your mistakes, fearlessly--do not, I beg you,
humiliate yourselves by trying to conciliate an old man, who chooses to
do what he will with the money he made with his own wits and labor.
There, that is particularly what I wanted to say to you. Don't try to
'work' me. Don't expect anything from me. Thus, if we are friends, it
will be a disinterested friendship. Otherwise, if I felt that we were
on good terms, I should be thinking to myself--'It is only because I am
the rich uncle.' If you were amiable with me, I'd think, 'That's
because they are afraid of angering me.' Now--let us be friends. I
think I can be very fond of my nieces--but don't expect anything from
me. Is that clear? Will you make friends with an old man on those
terms?" He looked first into Mrs. Prescott's eyes, and saw that she
was still hostile; at Alma, and read her bewilderment in her face, and
then at Nancy. Again his eyes softened, almost touchingly, and with
quick instinct she understood the appeal that lay beneath his brusque
language. She remembered her father's stories of his tenderness, and
somehow she understood that what the old man longed for was the simple
affection of which for so long his life had been empty. And she
understood, too, his dread of gaining that affection by holding out
hopes of payment for it. His reiterated "Don't expect anything of me,"
was more of a plea than a curt warning. He wanted their good-will for
himself, and not for his money--that was what he was trying to say in
his brusque, almost crude, way. Her eyes were bright with this
understanding of