“Like most people, Margaret, you want to be advised to follow your own counsel.”

“God knows that I want to do right, John. I want to do nothing else, John, but what’s right. As to this money, I care but little for it for myself.”

“It is your own, and you have a right to enjoy it.”

“I don’t know much about enjoyment. As to enjoyment, it seems to me to be pretty much the same whether a person is rich or poor. I always used to hear that money brought care, and I’m sure I’ve found it so since I had any.”

“You’ve got no children, Margaret.”

“No; but there are all those orphans. Am I not bound to look upon them as mine, now that he has gone? If they don’t depend on me, whom are they to depend on?”

“If your mind is made up, Margaret, I have nothing to say against it. You know what my wishes are. They are just the same now as when you were last with us. It isn’t only for the money I say this, though, of course, that must go a long way with a man circumstanced as I am; but, Margaret, I love you dearly, and if you can make up your mind to be my wife, I would do my best to make you happy.”

“I hadn’t meant you to talk in that way, John,” said Margaret.

But she was not much flurried. She was now so used to these overtures that they did not come to her as much out of the common way. And she gave herself none of that personal credit which women are apt to take to themselves when they find they are often sought in marriage. She looked upon her lovers as so many men to whom her income would be convenient, and felt herself to be almost under an obligation to them for their willingness to put up with the incumbrance which was attached to it.

“But it’s the only way I can talk when you ask me about this,” said he. Then he paused for a moment before he added, “How much is it you wish to give to your brother’s widow?”

“Half what I’ve got left.”

“Got left! You haven’t lost any of your money have you, Margaret?”

Then she explained to him the facts as to the loan, and took care to explain to him also, very fully, the compensatory fact of the purchase by the railway company. “And my promise to him was made after I had lent it, you know,” she urged.

“I do think it ought to be deducted; I do indeed,” he said. “I am not speaking on my own behalf now, as for the sake of my children, but simply as a man of business. As for myself, though I do think I have been hardly used in the matter of my uncle’s money, I’ll try to forget it. I’ll try at any rate to do without it. When I first knew you, and found—found that I liked you so much, I own that I did have hopes. But if it must be, there shall be an end of that. The children don’t starve, I suppose.”