be a question whether she did not love the youth whom she had nursed
almost as well as that other one who was her own proper offspring.

"And will you not put any check on thoughtless expenditure? If
you live ten or twenty years, as we hope you may, it will become
unnecessary; but in making a will, a man should always remember he
may go off suddenly."

"Especially if he goes to bed with a brandy bottle under his head;
eh, doctor? But, mind, that's a medical secret, you know; not a word
of that out of the bedroom."

Dr Thorne could but sigh. What could he say on such a subject to such
a man as this?

"Yes, I have put a check on his expenditure. I will not let his daily
bread depend on any man; I have therefore left him five hundred a
year at his own disposal, from the day of my death. Let him make what
ducks and drakes of that he can."

"Five hundred a year certainly is not much," said the doctor.

"No; nor do I want to keep him to that. Let him have whatever he
wants if he sets about spending it properly. But the bulk of the
property--this estate of Boxall Hill, and the Greshamsbury mortgage,
and those other mortgages--I have tied up in this way: they shall be
all his at twenty-five; and up to that age it shall be in your power
to give him what he wants. If he shall die without children before
he shall be twenty-five years of age, they are all to go to Mary's
eldest child."

Now Mary was Sir Roger's sister, the mother, therefore, of Miss
Thorne, and, consequently, the wife of the respectable ironmonger who
went to America, and the mother of a family there.

"Mary's eldest child!" said the doctor, feeling that the perspiration
had nearly broken out on his forehead, and that he could hardly
control his feelings. "Mary's eldest child! Scatcherd, you should
be more particular in your description, or you will leave your best
legacy to the lawyers."

"I don't know, and never heard the name of one of them."

"But do you mean a boy or a girl?"

"They may be all girls for what I know, or all boys; besides, I
don't care which it is. A girl would probably do best with it. Only
you'd have to see that she married some decent fellow; you'd be her
guardian."

"Pooh, nonsense," said the doctor. "Louis will be five-and-twenty in
a year or two."

"In about four years."

"And for all that's come and gone yet, Scatcherd, you are not going
to leave us yourself quite so soon as all that."

"Not if I can help it, doctor;