UP TO YOU.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7904, 6 January 1904, Page 4

UP TO YOU.

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me to learn the sad news from the papers, as an ordinary acquaintance might have done ; a piece of inconsiderate carelessness on their part which ga-^e me a shock from which it took my sensitive nature some months to recover. But ther c was a still crueller disappointment to follow. Not long after my dear friend's decase —before, in fact, I had properly recoverod from the shook of his death, James looked up from his paper one morning at breakfast, and said': , " I say, old girl, here's som© news that will interest you about that old fogey who called to see you a year or two ago — Lord Courtprobate ; I dare say you remember the old cove." Remember him, indeed! And I had never let a day pass without referring tc him and to his friendship for me since last we met! It had been the one bright spot in an otherwise blighted life. "Of course I remember him, James," 1 replied, controlling my voico as well as ] could, since James's rough opening of the still recent wound upset me not a little. "He was my dearest friend." "Well, he doesn't play up to the part, 1 must say," my husband brutally continued, not seeing that such careless handling of tender and sa-jred memories was absolute torture to my .deeper and more refined feelings. " For he has left two-thirds ol his large fortune to your cousin, Ebenezei Smith, and the remainder to charities, as he was a widower with no surviving relations. "To Ebenezer !" I gasped. Surely James must be going mad ! "Yes; I've just been reading a very interesting article on his will in the papers, and I said to myself as I was reading it : 'This will surprise the wife above a bit T It appears that when he was quite a ladhe was a self-made man, you know — Elnathan Smith, of Mudford, lent him th-s money to start in life, though — being only a minister — he couldn't very well afford it ; and old Courtprobate (Sam Tanner he was called in those days) was so grateful to your grandfather for this that he made up his nund to leave most of his fortune to Smith's descendants." " Good gracious ! what a tale 1" I cried. And James went on : "Tanner repaid the money as soon as he could ; but by the time that he had made his name and *fortune at the Bar he had lost sight of the Smiths at Mudford altogether. I suppose by that time your grandfather was dead and Ebenezer had moved to Manchester. Besides, Tanner was raised to -Se peerage as Lordl Courtprobate, and had a wife and son to provide for." "And where are they now 4 I should like to know?" .;'■•'__ "Can't say — they're dead/ answered James, with one of his vulgar guffaws. " And sOi when he found himseli left alone in the world aigain t Lord Courtprobate set about searching for your grandfather's de-•scendn-nts, so that he could. make them his heirs, and thus show his gratitude to his early benefactor." "Well, I n-even,!" I gasped. I literally could not say any more. • "But I must say," continued James, "that I think it was too bad of the old chaip to leave it all to the Ebenezers and not to think of you ; for you were as much your grandfather's grandchild as ever Ebenezer was ; and old Courtprobate had made friends with you into the bargain. But for pure injustice., giv©. me a judge t as my father used to say !" " Lord Courtprobate cared ior me for my own sake," I replied haughtily.; -"he never knew th-at I was- .the granddaughter of the Reveaend Smith*?' "Then he ought to have known;, he ought to have found it out. If he could find out that Ebenezer wins old Smith's descendant, he cou^d have found out that you were. And t besides, Ebenezer would have told him, if he'd; bad any proper feeling." "Ebenezer does not know that -Tra alive," I said; "I h&ve cut myself off go completely from him and his vulgar circle that I have reason to know 1 that they believe I aan no more." James patted me on the back in that rough way of his that I detest. v "Well,