house with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs to her though I live there.”

“Vernons,” put in the other. “What’s that?”

“It’s the name of our house in Charleston. It’s mine, really, but my father left it to Maria to live in; it comes to me at her death. I don’t want that house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but it’s such a pleasant old place, I like to live there instead of buying a house of my own. Vernons isn’t exactly a house, it’s more like a family tree—hollow—with all the ancestors inside instead of hanging on the branches.”

“But why on earth didn’t Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?” asked Hennessey. “There’d have been some sense in that—a middle-aged woman—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Pinckney, “my aunt is not a middle-aged woman, she’s not fifteen.”

“Not what?” said Hennessey.

“Not fifteen—in years of discretion, though she’s over seventy as time goes. She has no knowledge at all of what money is or what money means—she flings it away, doesn’t spend it—just flings it away 36 on anything and everything but herself. I don’t believe there’s a charity in the States that hasn’t squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that hasn’t banked on her. She was sent into the world to grow flowers and look after stray dogs and be robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy years at it and she doesn’t know she has ever been robbed. She’s not a fool by any manner of means, and she rules the servants at Vernons in the good old patriarchal way, but she’s lost where money is concerned. That’s why Berknowles wanted me to look after the girl’s interests. As for anything else, I guess Maria Pinckney will be the real guardian.”

36

“Well, I don’t know,” said Hennessey. He was confused by all these new ideas shot into his mind suddenly like this after dinner, he could see that Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated him to think that Philip Berknowles should have chosen a youth like this to be second father to Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey? Hadn’t he a fine house in Merrion Square and a wife who would have treated the girl like a daughter?

“Well, I don’t know,” said he. “It’s not for me to dispute the wishes of a client, but I’ve known Phyl since she was born and I’ve known her father since we were together at Trinity College and I’d have taken it more handsome if he’d left the 

 Prev. P 19/185 next