Mark Mason's Victory Part 13

"My dear boy, you are not practical."

"I quite agree with Mark," said Mrs. Mason. "I would not wish him to become a public spectacle."

CHAPTER VIII.

A SCENE IN MRS. MACK'S ROOM.

FIFTEEN minutes before a stout, ill-dressed man of perhaps forty years of age knocked at the door of Mrs. Mack's room.

"Come in!" called the old lady in quavering accents.

The visitor opened the door and entered.

"Who are you?" asked the old lady in alarm.

"Don't you know me, Aunt Jane?" replied the intruder. "I'm Jack Minton, your nephew."

"I don't want to see you--go away!" cried Mrs. Mack.

"That's a pretty way to receive your own sister's son, whom you haven't seen for five years."

"I haven't seen you because you've been in jail," retorted his aunt in a shrill voice.

"Yes, I was took for another man," said Jack. "He stole and laid it off on to me."

"I don't care how it was, but I don't want to see you. Go away!"

"Look here, Aunt Jane, you're treating me awful mean. I'm your own orphan nephew, and you ought to make much of me."

"An orphan--yes. You hurried your poor mother to the grave by your bad conduct," said Mrs. Mack with some emotion. "You won't find me so soft as she was."

"Soft? No, you're as hard as flint, but all the same you're my aunt, and you're rich, while I haven't a dollar to bless myself with."

"Rich! Me rich!" repeated the old lady shrilly. "You see how I live.

Does it look as if I was rich?"

"Oh, you can't humbug me that way. You could live better if you wanted to."

"I'm poor--miserably poor!" returned the old woman.

"I'd like to be as poor as you are!" said Jack Minton grimly. "You're a miser, that's all there is about it. You half starve yourself and live without fire, when you might be comfortable, and all to save money.

You're a fool! Do you know where all your money will go when you're dead?"

"There won't be any left."

"Won't there? I'll take the risk of that, for I shall be your heir.

It'll all go to me!" said Jack, chuckling.

"Go away! Go away!" cried the terrified old woman wildly.

"I want to have a little talk with you first, aunt," said Jack, drawing the only other chair in the room in front of Mrs. Mack and sitting down on it. "You're my only relation, and we ought to have an understanding.

Why, you can't live more than a year or two--at your age."

"What do you mean?" said Mrs Mack angrily. "I'm good for ten years. I'm only seventy-seven."

"You're living on borrowed time, Aunt Jane, you know that yourself.

You've lived seven years beyond the regular term, and you can't live much longer."

"Go away! Go away!" said the terrified old woman, really alarmed at her nephew's prediction. "I don't want to have anything to do with you."

"Don't forget that I'm your heir."

"I can leave my money as I please--not that I've got much to leave."

"You mean you'll make a will? Well, go ahead and do it. There was a man I know made a will and he died the next day."

This shot struck home, for the old woman really had a superst.i.tious dread of making a will.

"You're a terrible man!" she moaned. "You scare me."

"Come, aunt, be reasonable. You can leave part of your money away from me if you like, but I want you to help me now. I'm hard up. Do you see this nickel?" and he drew one from his vest pocket.

"Yes."

"Well, it's all the money I've got. Why, I haven't eaten anything to-day, and I have no money to pay for a bed."

"I--I haven't any supper for you."

"I don't want any _here_. I wouldn't care to board with you, Aunt Jane.

Why, I should soon become a bag of bones like yourself. I don't believe you've got five cents' worth of provisions in the room."

"There's half a loaf of bread in the closet."

"Let me take a look at it."

He strode to the closet and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took it in his hand, laughing.

"Why, that bread is three days' old," he said. "Where's your b.u.t.ter?"

"I--I don't eat b.u.t.ter. It's too high!"

"And you don't care to live high!" said Jack, laughing at his own joke.

"I don't care to rob you of this bread, Aunt Jane. It's too rich for my blood. Don't you ever eat anything else?"