A lawyer in Albany may thrive passing well for eight or ten years,
and yet not leave behind him any very large sum of money if he dies
at the end of that time. Some small modicum, some few thousand
dollars, John Bell had amassed, so that his widow and daughters were
not absolutely driven to look for work or bread.
In those happy days when cash had begun to flow in plenteously to
the young father of the family, he had taken it into his head to
build for himself, or rather for his young female brood, a small
neat house in the outskirts of Saratoga Springs. In doing so he was
instigated as much by the excellence of the investment for his
pocket as by the salubrity of the place for his girls. He furnished
the house well, and then during some summer weeks his wife lived
there, and sometimes he let it.
How the widow grieved when the lord of her heart and master of her
mind was laid in the grave, I need not tell. She had already
counted ten years of widowhood, and her children had grown to be
young women beside her at the time of which I am now about to speak.
Since that sad day on which they had left Albany they had lived
together at the cottage at the Springs. In winter their life had
been lonely enough; but as soon as the hot weather began to drive
the fainting citizens out from New York, they had always received
two or three boarders--old ladies generally, and occasionally an old
gentleman--persons of very steady habits, with whose pockets the
widow's moderate demands agreed better than the hotel charges.
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