to your house to talk over the matter of your college education
and I told you to call Aunt Sharley into the conference--you remember
that, don't you? And you remember she come out strong in favour of
Knollwood and that after a while we seemed to give in? Well, child, I've
got a little confession to make to you now along with a bigger one later
on: That was all a little piece of by-play that had been planned out in
advance. We knowed beforehand that Aunt Sharley was goin' to favour
Knollwood and that we were goin' to fall into line with her notions
about it at the end. She'd already licked us to a standstill there in my
office, and we were jest tryin' to save our faces.

"So you went to college and you both stayed there two full years. And I
mout ez well tell you right now that the principal reason why you had so
many purty fixin's to wear whilst you was away and why you had ez much
pin money to spend ez any other two girls there was because that old
woman lived on less'n it would take, seemin'ly, to keep a bird alive,
savin' every cent she could scrape up, and bringin' it to me to be sent
on to you ez part of your allowance."

"But I don't understand yet," cried out Emmy Lou. "Why, Judge, Aunt
Sharley just can write her own name. We had to print out the words in
the letters we wrote her so that she could read them. I don't understand
how the poor good old ignorant soul could figure out where the money
which paid for our schooling could be found when both you and Doctor
Lake----"

"I'm comin' to that part now," he told her. "Honey, you were right when
you guessed that Aunt Sharley has been holdin' somethin' back frum you
durin' this past week; but she's been tellin' you the truth too--in a
way of speakin'. She ain't got any money saved up--or at least ef she's
got any at all it ain't ez much ez you imagine. Whut she's got laid by
kin only represent the savin's of four or five years, not of a whole
lifetime. And when she said to you that she couldn't leave you to go to
live in that little house that your father left her in his will she
wasn't speakin' a lie. She can't go there to live because it ain't
hers--she don't own it any more. Over five years ago she sold it
outright, and she took the price she got fur it and to that price she
added whut she'd saved up ez the fruits of a life-time of toil spent in
your service and the service of your people before you, and that was the
money--her money, every cent of it--which p