Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 6

"Oh!" gasped Nan, feeling a positive pain at her heart. This awful possibility had never entered her mind before.

"But it isn't," went on her mother blithely. "It is real. Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, must have been very old; and he was probably as saving and canny as any Scotchman who ever wore kilts. It is not surprising that he should have left an estate of considerable size-----"

"Ten thousand dollars!" breathed Nan again. She loved to repeat it.

There was white magic in the very sound of such a sum of money. But her father threw a conversational bomb into their midst the next instant.

"Ten thousand dollars, you goosey!" he said vigorously. "That's the main doubt in the whole business. It isn't ten thousand dollars. It's fifty thousand dollars! A pound, either English or Scotch, is almost five of our dollars. Ten thousand dollars would certainly be a fortune for us; fifty thousand is beyond the dreams of avarice."

"Oh, dear me!" said Nan weakly.

But Mrs. Sherwood merely laughed again. "The more the better," she said.

"Why shouldn't we be able to put fifty thousand dollars to good use?"

"Oh, we can, Momsey," said Nan eagerly. "But, will we be let?"

Mr. Sherwood laughed grimly at that; but his wife continued confidently:

"I am sure n.o.body needs it more than we do."

"Why!" her daughter said, just as excitedly, "we'll be as rich as Bess Harley's folks. Oh, Momsey! Oh, Papa Sherwood! Can I go to Lakewood Hall?"

The earnestness of her cry showed the depths to which that desire had plumbed during these last weeks of privation and uncertainty. It was Nan's first practical thought in relation to the possibility of their changed circ.u.mstances.

The father and mother looked at each other with shocked understanding.

The surprise attending the letter had caused both parents to forget, for the moment, the effect of this wonderful promise of fortune, whether true or false, on imaginative, high-spirited Nan.

"Let us be happy at first, Nan, just in the knowledge that some money is coming to us," Mrs. Sherwood said more quietly. "Never mind how much, or how little. Time will tell all that."

"Now you talk like father," cried Nan, pouting.

"And let father talk a little, too," Mr. Sherwood said, smiling, "and to you both." His right forefinger struck the letter emphatically in his other hand. "This is a very wonderful, a blessed, thing, if true. But it has to be proven. We must build our hopes on no false foundation."

"Oh, Papa Sherwood! How can we, when the man says there-----"

"Hus.h.!.+" whispered Momsey, squeezing her excited little daughter's hand.

"In the first place," continued Mr. Sherwood quietly and gravely, "there may be some mistake in the identification of your mother, child, as the niece mentioned in this old man's will."

"Oh!" Nan could not help that gasp.

"Again, there may be stronger opposition to her claim than this lawyer at present sees. Fifty thousand dollars is a whole lot of money, and other people by the name of Blake will be tempted by it."

"How mean of them!" whispered Nan.

"And, above all," pursued Mr. Sherwood, "this may be merely a scheme by unprincipled people to filch small sums of money from gullible people.

The 'foreign legacy swindle' is worked in many different ways. There may be calls for money, by this man who names himself Andrew Blake, for preliminary work on the case. We haven't much; but if he is baiting for hundreds of Blakes in America he may secure, in the aggregate, a very tidy sum indeed."

"Oh, Father!" cried Nan. "That's perfectly horrid!"

"But perfectly possible. Let us not swallow this bait, hook, line and sinker. You see, he sends no copy of the will in question, or that codicil relating to your mother's legacy; nor does he offer identification or surety as to his own standing. Don't let the possibilities of this wonderful thing carry you off your feet, my dear."

Nan's lip was quivering and she could scarcely crowd back the tears. To have one's hopes rise so high only to be dashed-----.

"Don't completely crush us, Papa Sherwood, with your perfectly unanswerable logic," said his wife lightly. "We'll remember all these strictures, and more. We can at least put the matter to the test."

"Quite so," agreed her husband. "We will prepare the papers requested by this Scotch attorney. I will even inquire of a good lawyer here something regarding the Scotch laws in such a matter as this, if it will be necessary to make a personal appearance before the local courts over there. And perhaps we can find out the true standing of Mr. Andrew Blake, of Kellam & Blake, Edinburgh. It will cost us a little money, and we can ill spare it now; but to satisfy ourselves-----"

"We will throw a sprat to catch a herring," quoted Momsey cheerfully.

"Quite so," repeated Mr. Sherwood.

"But, dear, DEAR!" moaned Nan. "Is that all it is going to amount to?

Don't you really believe it's all true, Papa Sherwood?"

"I can't say that I do, my dear," returned her father gravely. "Such romantic things as this do not often happen outside of story books."

"Then, I declare!" cried Nan desperately, "I wish we lived in a story book!"

"Your father will make inquiries at once, honey," said Momsey easily, seemingly very little disturbed herself by her husband's doubts and fears. To her mind this wonderful turn of fortune's wheel was in direct answer to prayer. Nothing could shake her faith in the final result of her husband's inquiries. Yet, she was proud of his caution and good sense.

"I do think it is dreadful," murmured Nan, "to believe one's self rich for only a minute!"

"Have patience, honey," said her mother.

"Meanwhile," added Mr. Sherwood, rising, "I will go back to sifting cinders."

But Nan did no more sweeping that day.

Chapter VII. A VISTA OF NEW FORTUNES

Nan said nothing to Bess Harley, her particular chum and confidant, about the wonderful letter that had come from Scotland. Although Momsey and Nan talked the legacy over intimately that Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and planned what they would really do with some of the money "when their s.h.i.+p came in," the young girl knew that the matter was not to be discussed outside of the family circle.

Not even the hope Nan now cherished of accompanying her chum to Lakeview Hall when the next school year opened was divulged when the two girls were together on Sunday, or on the days that immediately followed.

Nan Sherwood went about her household and school tasks in a sort of waking dream. Imagination was continually weaving pictures in her mind of what might happen if the vista of new fortunes that had opened before the little family in the Amity Street cottage really came true.

Papa Sherwood's first reports on the matter of the Scotch legacy were not inspiring.

"Mr. Bludsoe says we'd better go slow," he said seriously. Mr. Bludsoe was a lawyer of high repute in Tillbury. "This letter may be written by an attorney in Edinburgh; but there are rascally lawyers there as well as elsewhere. Bludsoe had correspondents in London. They may be able to inform him regarding the firm of solicitors, Kellam & Blake, if the firm really is entered at the Scotch bar."

"Oh! But won't that mean delay?" murmured Nan.

"Meanwhile," said her father, smiling at her impatience, "we will prepare the papers identifying your dear mother so that, if this wonderful new fortune should be a reality, we can put in a proper claim for it. Just the same," he added to his wife, when Nan had left the room, "I have written to that machine shop boss in Chicago that I am ready to come to work any day he may send for me."

"Oh, Robert!" gasped the little lady. "Won't you believe?"

"Like the darkey who was asked if he believed the world was round, and said, 'Ah believes it, but Ah ain't dead sho' of it.' I presume this great fortune is possible, Jessie, but I haven't perfect and abiding faith in its existence, FOR us," said her husband.