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Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite, chairman of the board of Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Inc., tapped upon his rosewood writing desk.

“The meeting will please come to order,” he said. “We are all of us busy men and I personally have but a few minutes to spare. I suppose we can dispense with reading the last minutes?... Very well; they stand approved.... Have you anything special to report, Mr. Gobbet?”

Mr. Gobbet, conscious that he dominated the situation, complacently twiddled his glasses.

“No, there’s nothing particularly on my mind at the moment. Everything seems to be going fine. We might have another special investigator. I know of an excellent man whom we can get for forty-five hundred a year. And the country staff needs a new automobile.”

Mr. Hepplewhite, whose social and artistic interests left him comparatively little time for philanthropy, always felt at a disadvantage with Gobbet. At the moment his mind was completely occupied with a contemplated $40,000 purchase of Ming porcelain. He now looked inquiringly at the two other gentlemen present, both of whom nodded without comment.

“Seems reasonable. It is so voted. Is there anything else?”

“Carson, my assistant, has been with me ten years,” went on Mr. Gobbet. “He gets only twelve thousand dollars a year. In view of our highly satisfactory financial condition—the treasurer’s report shows assets of over five million—would not a slight increase—say to fifteen thousand—be in order?”

“It doesn’t seem out of line to me,” concurred Mr. Hepplewhite. “Agreed?... So voted. Anything else? I fear I shall have to hurry along, gentlemen. The meeting stands adjourned.”

Stifled sobs awoke Grandma Benton. Poor Leila! She got up and went to the door leading to the hall. With her hand on the knob, she paused.

“It simply can’t be done, darling!” she heard Richard Bryant, the girl’s fiancé, saying. “What with my own grandmother and Auntie Bess living with us, I can only just stagger along as it is. Anyhow, I don’t want my wife to have to run an old ladies’ home!”

“All right, dear,” answered Leila bravely. “After all, we’re young and can afford to wait.”

“If you’re willing to, sweetheart. It’s a tough break for both of us. I hope you understand.”

“Oh, I do, Richard! I do!”

The outer door closed and his footsteps rattled down the stairs. Grandma stood motionless, her delicate profile silhouetted against the white wall. Her parents had said precisely the same thing fifty years ago. If only she had married Lawrence Pell instead of “waiting”! Could half a century have flown since they had stood together under the cedar of Lebanon on the terrace behind her father’s house and watched the moon come up across the East River? Could anyone afford to wait? Youth came but once!

There were no more sounds from the other side of the partition, and Grandma went back to bed. Strange, how she thought so much these days about Lawrence, so much about the old brick mansion with its terraces sloping down to the river, the humid greenhouse with its overpowering odors, the stable with its dovecotes, ancient Pompey driving the pair of bays in the C-spring victoria. Incredible that she could be seventy-one! The clang of streetcars and the hoot of motors from Amsterdam Avenue four flights below filled her ears as she lay there in her little cubicle.

There was not a trace of unhappiness on the girl’s face next morning when she brought in Mrs. Benton’s breakfast tray. “‘Oh, grandmother, what great big eyes you’ve got!’” she said.

“The better to see through you, my dear!”

Mrs. Benton’s smile faded as Leila went out. Could she live without Leila? No, that wasn’t the question! Could Leila really live with an old woman hanging like a millstone about her neck? From her wallet she removed a slip of paper with some notes copied from the Registry of Social Services.

Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Incorporated. Coverdale, Westchester, New York.

A home for aged women of good breeding and refinement who have fallen into adverse circumstances. Apply in person to the supt. For women of 65 years or over. Adm. $500; transfer of property if not willed to relatives. Visiting three times a week.

“Sounds very nice,” she declared resolutely. But her sight blurred as she looked around the sunny little room. Could she bear to leave it? “Where’s your nerve, Leila Wadsworth?” she murmured, dashing her eyes. “Be a sport.”

Mr. Wallace Gobbet, after an excellent luncheon, sat smoking in the bay window of the old Wadsworth house overlooking the East River. He had sat there comfortably most of the time for eighteen years. In fact, his two daughters had been born upstairs. He could see them now, playing tennis on the lawn with Gosford and Ashley, his two secretaries. A swell place, the only one of its kind left, now that the section was becoming fashionable and huge apartments were going up all along the water front. No reason why he shouldn’t live there indefinitely. Next summer maybe he could wangle a motor launch.

The desk telephone buzzed and he reached over. “Hello, Carson. Everything all right?”

“Okay, Mr. Gobbet,” answered the assistant superintendent at Coverdale. “I just thought I’d let you know we’ve had a new application—a Mrs. Benton.”

“But we’re full up!”

“All the same, I’m shooting her in to see you this afternoon. She’s Eben Wadsworth’s daughter.”

A prolonged pause followed.

“But I thought she’d disappeared years ago!” protested Gobbet.

“She was living in Europe for a long time, but now she’s back again, completely busted. Naturally, she thought of us.”

“Naturally! Hold on a minute while I think.”

What had possessed Carson to send the old girl in there? They’d have to make room for her in Westchester somehow.

“What’s she like?” he asked finally.

“Very much the lady. In fact, it was quite a shock to learn that she was down and out.”

“Did you explain to her about our conditions? The five-hundred-dollar admission fee and assignment of property?”

“Yes. She’s only got two hundred and fifty. I thought you might want to waive it, under the circumstances.”

“How soon will she be here?”

“Within an hour probably. I hope I did the right thing?”

“I suppose so,” grunted Gobbet. He pressed a button. “Tell Mr. Gosford I’m sorry to have to interrupt his game, but I must see him immediately,” he said to the maidservant.

It was four o’clock, she had had no lunch and, after her long trip to Westchester, Mrs. Benton was feeling very tired. The cross-town bus had deposited her in a little street, hardly more than a cul-de-sac, in what seemed a totally unfamiliar part of the city. Strange that it should be marked “Wadsworth Place.” At the end of it she stopped before a double iron gate over which hung a large sign Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Inc. Her heart fluttered. Surely it was the same gate through which, during all her early years, old Pompey had driven her in the C-spring victoria! She turned the handle of the green door beside it, peeked through and gave a little cry of joy. Nothing was changed. Even the cedar of Lebanon was still there. Time had turned back for her in its flight. How large the lawn seemed—almost a whole block! And there was one of the old ladies sitting on a bench. A very nice-looking old lady. What a lovely place for them to live, where all day long they could rest under the trees and watch the traffic on the river.

A maid led her down the familiar tessellated-marble hall to her father’s library, where Mr. Gobbet, pinkly bald, well fleshed, with cold gray eyes, was waiting.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Benton,” said he. “I am happy to tell you that I have already arranged for your admission to Coverdale and for the waiving of the customary fee.”

“How kind of you! But, couldn’t I stay here in the house where I was born?”

Mr. Gobbet shook his head. “I’m sorry, but that is impossible. You’ll really be much happier in the country. You appreciate the fact that you are rather lucky, Mrs. Benton? We are, in fact, full in both places. A special dispensation has been extended in your case.”

“I am very grateful.”

Mr. Gobbet waved his cigar in deprecation. “Your father left us a considerable bequest! I understand that you filled out a complete questionnaire at Coverdale this morning. There’s only one other little formality, which can be attended to right now.... Come in, Mr. Gosford. This is Mrs. Benton. Have you prepared her agreement?”

Mr. Gosford, a husky, white-flanneled youth destined for one of the Misses Gobbet, handed his chief a bundle of typewritten sheets.

“It’s all ready for signature. I’ll take her acknowledgment.”

Mr. Gobbet spread the paper on the desk. “Sign here, please.”

“What is it that I am to sign?”

“Just an assignment of property. If you had any, of course you couldn’t be admitted.”

Through the window Grandma could see a shiny limousine being backed out of the stable by a liveried chauffeur.

“Shouldn’t I—read it first?” she hesitated.

“If you care to do so,” returned Mr. Gobbet stiffly. “However, it’s the merest formality.”

But Grandma’s daemon had stepped to her side. She recalled how she had once signed a paper without examining it for Joshua Benton, her former husband, and what the consequences had been.

“I think, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take it away and read it after I’m rested. I’ve had a rather fatiguing day.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Gobbet in a tone of disapproval. “As you deem best.” He rang. “Tell Judson to bring round the car,” he ordered.... “Good afternoon, Mrs. Benton.”

“Dey’s a lady askin’ fo’ you, Mr. Tutt.” Mandy, exhausted with climbing the steep flight, leaned against the library doorpost. “An old lady. She say how she know you long time ago.”

The lawyer, comfortably elongated in his sway-backed rocker before the fire, paused in the act of draining a glass of Burgundy.

“What’s her name?”

“Mis’ Joshua Benton.”

“Don’t know any such person. What does she look like?”

“Jes’ lak’ a flower! She say you knew her father—a Mr. Eben Wadsworth.”

Mr. Tutt straightened his long legs and put down his glass.

“Eben Wadsworth? Send her up at once!”

The courteous old gentleman who greeted Mrs. Benton on the landing was not the Ephraim Tutt whom she recalled as a clerk in Judge Fernald’s office. That Mr. Tutt had been a young man with black wavy hair; a long straight nose and whimsical smile. But yes, the smile was the same!

“Do you recognize me?” she asked.

“I’d know you anywhere, Miss Leila! You haven’t changed a bit! You look——”

“Nonsense!” she panted. “May I sit down?”

Mr. Tutt waved her gallantly to the rocker, noticing as he did so the threadbare coat and cracked shoes.

“Will you have a taste of Chambertin?”

He poured her out a creaming glass and lifted his own.

“To the memory of a great and generous man,” he said reverently.

They sipped the toast in silence.

“I hope you’ll forgive my breaking in on you so unexpectedly,” she apologized. “But you were my father’s lawyer and I didn’t know to whom else to turn.”

“His attorney was Judge Fernald,” he corrected her. “I was associated with him and took over his practice when he died.”

“That explains it! I looked for his name in the telephone book and couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I thought of you. So here I am.”

“I remember the first time you came to our office,” said Mr. Tutt reminiscently. “It must have been—no, no, it couldn’t have been that long ago! You were waiting for your father in a victoria driven by an old Negro coachman. You were about twenty then, I should say, and quite the loveliest girl I’d ever seen. I made an excuse to go downstairs and speak to you.”

She flushed. “I remember. I had on my new spring dress. I’d been to the Patriarch’s the night before,” she sighed. “I sometimes wonder if those days ever could have been.”

He lit a stogie and pulled a rocker to the other side of the fire.

“You’ll never know what you did to that lanky country boy! I cut your picture out of the paper and pinned it to the mirror in my bedroom. I was always reading about you, in another world from mine entirely.”

“Why didn’t you ask if you could come to see me?” she asked almost coyly.

“I was afraid to! All the beaus in town were at your feet! I knew I hadn’t a chance!”

“I think that you’d have had a chance!”

“Then I heard you’d gone to Europe and, later, that you had married. Didn’t you have a daughter?”

“Yes, Phœbe. Her husband was killed at the Marne. By that time I’d divorced my husband, who’d spent most of my money, besides treating me rather badly in other ways. So I took Phœbe to Italy, where her baby was born. She died there soon after. When Leila was twelve, I brought her home to be educated. My income had been growing less every year, but I still had enough to put her in a good school and to live at a small hotel. Then the depression came, and I lost everything. We moved into a little flat in the upper part of town and she started looking for a job. At last she found one as a translator with the Foreign Policy Association.”

“Leila must be a great comfort to you.”

“She is. But—but now she wants to marry a young architect named Richard Bryant, and—well, he can barely get along as it is, and I—I stand in the way! I remembered that father had left a sum of money to a home for aged women, and I thought perhaps, on that account, they might be willing to take me in. The book said that Coverdale was in Westchester, so today, without her knowledge, I went out there and made an application. They sent me back to an address in New York. Where do you suppose it was? Our own old house on the river!”

“It had been converted into a home?”

“Yes. It would have been marvelous if I could have gone back there, but it was full. The superintendent said they would waive the five-hundred-dollar fee, but that I must make over my property to the institution.”

“That is customary.”

“All the same, it frightened me a little. He didn’t seem to want me to take away the paper, but I held out firmly and did.” She opened her bag. “I wonder if you’d be willing to read it over for me before I sign it.”

She handed him the typewritten document. He looked at her solicitously.

“You must be very tired if you have done all that today.”

“I am,” she admitted.

“Then this will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going to take you right home in a taxi. It’s time for you to be in bed.”

It was eleven o’clock before Mr. Tutt got back to his library. To think of Eben Wadsworth’s only daughter living in a dump like that! He sat down before the fire and took up the agreement.

Whereas Leila Wadsworth Benton, hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part, desires to become an inmate of Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Incorporated, party of the second part, and to fulfill all the requirements governing admission to the same, now, therefore ... the said party of the first part, in consideration of the premises, hereby agrees to transfer, make over and assign all her property, both present and hereafter to be acquired, to the said party of the second part, including all right, title and interest, of whatsoever kind, both real and personal, which she may have or be held to have, in the estate of her father, Eben Wadsworth, deceased, and to execute and deliver whatever instruments or deeds may be necessary thereto.

Mr. Tutt’s shaggy eyebrows drew into a knot. Why should they ask her to do that? Was there something here that did not meet the eye? The night was young. Mr. Tutt, stuffing his pockets with stogies, hailed a cruising taxi and ordered the driver to take him to his Broadway office.

“Here it is!” said Grandma Benton two days later, as their taxi came to a stop before the iron gates of her former home. “It’s very kind of you to come with me, but I’m afraid it won’t do any good.”

“You never can tell,” Mr. Tutt grunted, noting the party of four young people playing tennis at the farther end of the lawn. “Anyhow, keep your eyes open.”

“Have you an appointment?” cautiously inquired the maid who answered their ring.

“Tell Mr. Gobbet that Mrs. Benton is here with the papers and has brought her attorney with her.”

“What name, sir?”

“Tutt—Ephraim Tutt.”

Impressed with the old man’s quiet air of authority, the maid led them into the library.

Mr. Gobbet, who, although it was nearly half after ten, was still luxuriously breakfasting in bed, learned who was below with some annoyance. He had heard of Mr. Tutt and had no wish to have the old fox nosing into his affairs. Not that he had anything to conceal. Suppose he did have a cushy job? Hadn’t the state and C. O. S. inspectors passed everything as O.K. year after year? After a testator had been dead and buried a quarter of a century, one ought to have the right to rely on his staying so. Nevertheless, he showed no perturbation as he entered briskly and shook hands.

“So you represent Mrs. Benton? Good! We want everything fully understood. ‘Open covenants, openly arrived at,’ eh?”

“Exactly, Mr. Gobbet,” nodded Mr. Tutt affably.

Through the open door of the library he could look across the hall to a dining room, where, apparently, the table had been laid for eight.

The superintendent nervously followed the lawyer’s glance. The old Paul Pry!

“Has your client signed the agreement?”

“Not yet. There are one or two details I’d like to ask you about first. Suppose we excuse Mrs. Benton while we discuss them.”

“By all means! ... Do you remember the way to the garden, Mrs. Benton?”

“Indeed I do! It’s just behind the stairs in the conservatory.”

“Charming! Charming!” murmured Mr. Gobbet, after Grandma had gone out. “Sad to think of the daughter of Eben Wadsworth having lost everything she had in the world! May I offer you a cigar?”

Mr. Tutt shook his head.

“That suggests something I want to know, Mr. Gobbet. Will you kindly tell me why, if Mrs. Benton has, in fact, nothing in the world, you are so anxious to have her deed over to your institution all her interest in her father’s estate?”

Grandma paused only long enough in the conservatory to observe that it was even fuller of plants and flowers than in her own day, before stepping out upon the greensward. How trim and well-kept everything was! She looked about for the old ladies, but could see only the same one who had been there on her first visit. Perhaps it was too early for the others to be out.

“Good morning,” she said. “What a lovely day!”

The old lady looked up with a cordial smile. “Isn’t it? I love to sit under this tree and watch the boats. Won’t you join me?”

“I used to live here when I was a child,” Grandma informed her new friend. “I was born in that corner room up there.”

“Really? That’s my room now. But if you come back you shall have it. I wouldn’t think of keeping it from you.”

“Oh, no! You mustn’t!” protested Grandma. “Besides, I’m not coming here. They’re sending me out to Coverdale. Have you been here long?”

“Eighteen years. You see, I’m Mrs. Liscomb, Mr. Gobbet’s mother-in-law. You say you were born here? Well, both my granddaughters were born here, too.” She nodded toward the tennis court.

Grandma was puzzled. “How many old ladies are here now?” she asked.

“I’m the only one. Mr. Gobbet’s mother lived here until she died about ten years ago.” Mrs. Liscomb reached over and patted Grandma’s hand. “I’m sure Wallace will let you stay here if I ask him to. It would be lovely to have you to walk and read with, and maybe”—a touch of color came into her faded cheeks—“maybe sometimes we could steal away and go to the movies! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

While Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite, as the scion of one of the city’s oldest and richest families, served by social inheritance as director or trustee of a large number of its philanthropic and artistic institutions, he, unfortunately, knew less than might have been reasonably expected about their affairs. He was just showing to his friend, Mrs. Rufus Witherspoon, a Renoir recently acquired for his private gallery, when his butler appeared and, with a deprecating cough, summoned him to the telephone.

“Some person named Tutt, sir. Most persistent. ‘Threatening,’ if I may use the word, sir.”

“Bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Hepplewhite. “What can he want? ... Hel-lo? Hel-lo! ... Yes, this is Mr. Hepplewhite speaking.”

“Are you chairman of the board of the Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Incorporated?” came the voice of the lawyer.

“Why, yes. I have been such for twelve years.”

“Then I advise you to telephone its attorney and join me at your Wadsworth Place office immediately.”

“But—but really! Isn’t this rather precipitous?” objected Mr. Hepplewhite. “I’ve a lady guest here with whom I have a luncheon engagement.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Tutt sternly, “if you keep that luncheon engagement it may cost you a million dollars!”

When Mr. Tutt escorted Grandma Benton back to her father’s library, she found the party augmented by two well-dressed gentlemen who had evidently just arrived.

“This is the lady whom I represent,” he announced. “Mrs. Benton, allow me to introduce Mr. Hepplewhite and Mr. Edgerton. Mr. Gobbet, here, you know.”

Mr. Hepplewhite pushed up an upholstered armchair for Grandma to sit in. She saw that they both were quite different from Mr. Gobbet, who had retired sullenly behind his desk.

“Mrs. Benton is the only daughter of General Eben Wadsworth,” Mr. Tutt informed them. “As such, she has a deep interest in the home.”

The faces of both the visitors brightened.

“I am delighted to hear it, Mrs. Benton!” exclaimed Mr. Hepplewhite. “It is a pleasure to meet the daughter of one of the institution’s benefactors.”

“As attorney for her father’s estate I have a similar interest,” continued Mr. Tutt. “Since we have a complaint to make as to its management, we wanted you to hear what we had to say firsthand.”

“Complaint!” exclaimed Mr. Hepplewhite nervously. “I hope it is not serious!”

“I am sorry to say that it is. When Mrs. Benton sought to be admitted to the home, your superintendent insisted upon an assignment of all her property, including her interest in her father’s estate.”

“You mean that Mrs. Benton is an applicant for admission to the institution?” asked Mr. Hepplewhite in a horrified tone.

“She has suffered financial reverses.”

“I am greatly distressed to hear it! Of course, room shall be made for her at once.”

“I have already arranged for that,” growled Gobbet. “I’ve done everything possible for Mrs. Benton, even to waiving the payment of the required fee.”

“It is true that you have agreed to take her into Coverdale, but you have refused to admit her here—to her own father’s house.”

“I was born here,” pleaded Grandma. “I would like to come back to it.”

“Why can’t you take Mrs. Benton in here, Gobbet?” inquired Edgerton.

“Simply because we’re full up,” sourly replied the superintendent. “I’m naturally very sorry for her. It’s just a question of room. As for the assignment of property, Mr. Edgerton, you know we insist upon it in every case, as a matter of good faith.”

“Good faith!” ejaculated Mr. Tutt. “Do you seek to take the widow’s mite away from her in every case?”

Gobbet jumped up, red about the collar. “What is this?” he rasped. “A criminal trial? Have I got to sit here quietly and be insulted without a word of defense?”

“Certainly not!” answered Mr. Tutt. “Your defense is just what we want to hear. You call this a home for aged women. How many inmates have you accommodated in the last eighteen years?”

Gobbet’s color deepened and spread upward. “Why—er—a good many—several. The number, of course, varies.”

“How many at present?” persisted the old lawyer.

“I—I can’t say exactly,” stammered the superintendent. “Come to think of it, I guess at the moment there’s only one.”

“What is her name?”

The superintendent hesitated.

“Well, what is it?” reiterated Mr. Tutt.

“Mrs. Liscomb.”

“Any relative of yours?” coaxed the old lawyer.

“She—she happens to be my mother-in-law,” admitted Gobbet thickly.

“She’s not enrolled as an inmate, is she?”

“I suppose not, but—she’s an old lady.”

Mr. Tutt smiled genially at Mr. Hepplewhite. “Well—if she’ll pardon my saying so—so is Mrs. Benton! Now, Mr. Gobbet, I notice that the dining table across the hall is set for eight. For whom are the places laid?”

“For the—er—inmates, my family and a few of the higher employees.”

“I see. How many in your family?”

“Five.”

“I don’t quite see the relevancy of this,” interpolated Mr. Edgerton. “If you want to show that there’s room here for Mrs. Benton, let’s agree that it can be made.”

“Will you agree further that this particular property has never, in fact, been used for the purposes of an old ladies’ home?” inquired Mr. Tutt sternly. “Mrs. Benton, please repeat to these gentlemen what Mr. Gobbet’s mother-in-law told you on the lawn.”

Grandma turned to Mr. Hepplewhite. “She told me that she had lived here for eighteen years—ever since her son-in-law had been superintendent—and that there had never been any old ladies here except herself and Mr. Gobbet’s mother.”

“I don’t get your drift,” remarked Edgerton, wrinkling his forehead. “We own this property and can use it as we see fit.”

“The Wadsworth property has always been used for administrative purposes,” put in Gobbet. “It is steadily increasing in value. Sometime, no doubt, it will be sold.”

“Isn’t this all a question of management, Mr. Tutt?” asked Mr. Hepplewhite politely. “I really fail to see how it concerns you or Mrs. Benton.”

Mr. Tutt took a paper from his pocket. “Have you ever seen the phraseology of the devise? I’ll read it:

“To the Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Incorporated, I give the sum of $25,000, together with my lot of land bordering upon the East River in the city of New York, the house and all other buildings thereon, absolutely and in fee simple, provided that the same be used for an old ladies’ home, otherwise said house and land shall fall into and become a part of my residuary estate.”

He paused and peered over his glasses at the two gentlemen.

“Well,” replied Edgerton, “what of it?”

“Merely that my client, Mrs. Benton, happens to be the residuary legatee of her father’s estate and that, since your corporation has never used the property for the purposes specified in his will, it has reverted to her.”

Mr. Edgerton was the first to break the silence which followed the detonation of Mr. Tutt’s legal bombshell.

“Your claim is preposterous!” he asserted vehemently. “So long as our plant in Westchester remains sufficient for our needs, Mr. Wadsworth would not wish us to cramp ourselves financially by duplicating it in the city. He certainly intended to allow some discretion in the handling of this property!”

“Discretion!” cried Mr. Tutt. “That is precisely what he did not intend to allow! His language is perfectly plain. Green versus Old People’s Home of Chicago, 269 Illinois 134, directly establishes my contention. The corporation has forfeited the devise for the simple reason that it has neglected to fulfill his conditions.”

Mr. Edgerton rubbed his chin. It certainly was a tough one, but as a high-priced lawyer, he could not afford to yield without putting up some sort of an argument.

“It’s not so easy as that!” he retorted. “I concede that the corporation, by accepting the devise, covenanted to carry out its terms, but a breach of covenant—even if there had been one, which I do not for a moment admit—is quite different from a forfeiture under which a residuary legatee can enter and take possession of the property. In Graves versus Deterling—in 120 New York, I think it is—it was held that where there is any doubt whether a clause contains a covenant or a condition, the courts will construe it so as to avoid a forfeiture.”

“Covenant my eye!” snorted the old man. “Any first-year law student could tell that this was a condition and not a covenant!”

“Anyhow,” continued the attorney feebly, “the law will allow a reasonable time for any condition to to be carried out, particularly by a charity. A complicated institution can’t be organized in a minute.”

“Twenty-seven years is rather more than a minute, isn’t it?” grinned Mr. Tutt. “You haven’t a leg to stand on, Edgerton, and you know it. Why drag out the agony? Mrs. Benton has only to bring an action in ejectment and the courts will instantly hand the property over to her.”

“I hope you do not mean to imply, Mr. Tutt, that we have been recreant to our trust,” said Mr. Hepplewhite.

“I certainly do,” retorted the old man. “Your institution has hardly made even a colorable attempt to serve the purposes for which it was originally founded. What it does is pure camouflage—window dressing. Its investments yield upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, out of which it supports exactly twenty-two old ladies! I hold in my hand a list of the salaries paid to its officials. They aggregate more than eighty thousand dollars. There’s something wrong when it costs an institution twelve thousand dollars a year to support each object of its charity. I make no charges against the board of management save that of negligence. There has been no dishonesty in the technical sense. But for the last eighteen years the Home for Aged Gentlewomen has been run as a racket. It is a shocking example of one-man control.”

“Do you refer to me, sir?” choaked Mr. Hepplewhite.

“I do not. The man to whom I refer is the one who, throughout that time, has lived in luxury with his wife and family in the former home of Eben Wadsworth, drawing a salary of twenty thousand dollars per year, with all expenses, and whose friends and relatives pad the pay roll of the corporation. I refer to that man behind the desk—Wallace T. Gobbet!”

The superintendent sat slumped in his chair, his head sunk on his breast, his face a sickly yellow.

“That is why he was so anxious to get Mrs. Benton to assign her interest in her father’s estate, for he very well knew that, owing to his own misconduct, this property has now, through legal reversion, become hers by right. I believe I told you that a million dollars hung on your coming here; I might better have said three millions.”

And then it was that Mr. Hepplewhite proved himself a man. Grandma Benton could not but feel sorry for him.

“I am chagrined and humiliated at what you have disclosed,” he confessed. “It could not have occurred had I given proper attention to the affairs of the institution. I’m not an attorney, but what you say as to the law seems clearly good morals and good sense. I have no doubt it is correct. I have rarely visited Wadsworth Place and I am astonished to learn the actual use to which it has been put.” He faced the wretched superintendent. “As for you, Gobbet, I’ve no words to describe what I think of you. We directors have been negligent, but you have been far worse. You treacherously took advantage of our negligence to feather your own nest and tried to extort from Mrs. Benton a deed for this property which would cover your delinquencies. You are discharged! Make arrangements to leave here with your family at once!”

“But,” whined Gobbet, getting to his feet, “are you going to put me out of my home without a hearing?”

“Hearing! Home!” sputtered Mr. Hepplewhite.

“How about Mrs. Benton, you—you——”

“The boys have a word for it,” suggested Mr. Tutt. “It begins with an l!”

“Anyhow, g-get out!” shouted the chairman of the board. He turned to the others after Gobbet had slunk past them. “And, of course, I shall resign myself,” he added.

“What would be the point of that, sir?” returned Mr. Tutt sympathetically. “Probably the same thing would have happened whoever had been chairman. This isn’t the only institution that suffers from absentee landlordism. If the Home for Aged Gentlewomen has got to be a one-man show, why not be that man?”

Grandma Benton’s heart was thumping and her eyes were bright.

“I don’t want to do anything to thwart father’s wishes,” she said, “but I don’t think he would have approved of Mr. Gobbet, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have wished me to go to the almshouse. I’m not so very old yet and I’m really quite strong. Couldn’t the corporation keep the property, turn it into a real old ladies’ home, just as he intended, and let me run it as resident manager? Of course, I should want to make a clean sweep of everyone that’s here now—all except Mrs. Liscomb. I’d like her to stay. She’s really a dear old thing.”

Mr. Hepplewhite blew his nose. Then he put his handkerchief carefully back in his pocket, walked over to Grandma Benton, bowed and raised her wrinkled hand to his lips.

“May I be permitted to say the same of you?” he asked.

One evening a month later, Grandma Benton stood with Mr. Tutt on the terrace, watching the electric signs as they flashed on and off, making paths of red and yellow across the blue-black river; behind them rose the glittering escarpments of the city, dominated by the spire of the Chrysler Building; a steamer bedecked with lights swam gleaming beneath the festoons of the Queensborough Bridge.

The old lady was very happy. Mr. Tutt had arranged that part of the property should be sold and a trust fund created for her benefit; Mr. and Mrs. Gobbet, their daughters and the two secretaries had moved out, bag and baggage, several weeks before; the entire former executive staff had been dismissed, including Mr. Carson and the investigators, four of whom were discovered to be related by marriage to the former superintendent; an additional wing to accommodate fifty inmates was already in contemplation at Coverdale, which Mr. Hepplewhite now visited so frequently that his collection of porcelains was almost neglected; and Grandma Benton herself had been duly installed as matron of the new Wadsworth Home, with old Mrs. Liscomb as her assistant, and Leila and Richard to keep her company.

It was dark before Grandma Benton had shown Mr. Tutt all the favorite spots of her childhood, the greenhouses and the stable with its dovecotes, from whose eaves came drowsy cooings. Then the moon thrust itself in a golden haze above the roofs on the opposite shore and drowned the lawn in a fairy mist. It might, she thought, have been that night fifty years ago, the very night that Lawrence had taken her in his arms, and told her that he loved her. As they rounded the corner of the house, Leila and Richard were standing together under the cedar of Lebanon.

“When are they going to be married?” asked Mr. Tutt.

“Next week,” said Grandma. “They’re young and can’t afford to wait.”