Where Theres a Will | Page 6

got fever!"
And we hurried to the house together.

CHAPTER III
A WILL
Well, we got the poor old doctor moved back to his room, and had one
of the chambermaids find him there, and I wired to Mrs. Van Alstyne,
who was Mr. Dicky Carter's sister, and who was on her honeymoon in
South Carolina. The Van Alstynes came back at once, in very bad
tempers, and we had the funeral from the preacher's house in
Finleyville so as not to harrow up the sanatorium people any more than
necessary. Even as it was a few left, but about twenty of the chronics
stayed, and it looked as if we might be able to keep going.
Miss Patty sent to town for a black veil for me, and even went to the
funeral. It helped to take my mind off my troubles to think who it was
that was holding my hand and comforting me, and when, toward the
end of the service, she got out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes I
was almost overcome, she being, so to speak, in the very shadow of a
throne.
After it was all over the relatives gathered in the sun parlor of the

sanatorium to hear the will--Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife and about
twenty more who had come up from the city for the funeral and stayed
over--on the house.
Well, the old doctor left me the buttons for his full dress waistcoat and
his favorite copy of Gray's Anatomy. I couldn't exactly set up
housekeeping with my share of the estate, but when the lawyer read
that part of the will aloud and a grin went around the room I flounced
out of my chair.
"Maybe you think I'm disappointed," I said, looking hard at the family,
who weren't making any particular pretense at grief, and at the house
people standing around the door. "Maybe you think it's funny to see an
unmarried woman get a set of waistcoat buttons and a medical book.
Well, that set of buttons was the set he bought in London on his
wedding trip, and the book's the one he read himself to sleep with every
night for twenty years. I'm proud to get them."
Mr. Van Alstyne touched me on the arm.
"Everybody knows how loyal you've been, Minnie," he assured me.
"Now sit down like a good girl and listen to the rest of the will."
"While I'm up I might as well get something else off my mind," I said.
"I know what's in that will, but I hadn't anything to do with it, Mr. Van
Alstyne. He took advantage of my being laid up with influenza last
spring."
They thought that was funny, but a few minutes later they weren't so
cheerful. You see the sanatorium was a mighty fine piece of property,
with a deer park and golf links. We'd had plenty of offers to sell it for a
summer hotel, but we'd both been dead against it. That was one of the
reasons for the will.
The whole estate was left to Dicky Carter, who hadn't been able to
come, owing to his being laid up with an attack of mumps. The family
sat up and nodded at one another, or held up its hands, but when they
heard there was a condition they breathed easier.

Beginning with one week after the reading of the will--and not a day
later--Mr. Dick was to take charge of the sanatorium and to stay there
for two months without a day off. If at the end of that time the place
was being successfully conducted and could show that it hadn't lost
money, the entire property became his for keeps. If he failed it was to
be sold and the money given to charity.
You would have to know Richard Carter to understand the excitement
the will caused. Most of us, I reckon, like the sort of person we've
never dared to be ourselves. The old doctor had gone to bed at ten
o'clock all his life and got up at seven, and so he had a sneaking
fondness for the one particular grandson who often didn't go to bed at
all. Twice to my knowledge when he was in his teens did Dicky Carter
run away from school, and twice his grandfather kept him for a week
hidden in the shelter-house on the golf links. Naturally when Mr. Van
Alstyne and I had to hide him again, which is further on in the story, he
went to the old shelter-house like a dog to its kennel, only this
time--but that's ahead, too.
Well, the family went back to town in a buzz of indignation, and I
carried my waistcoat buttons and my Anatomy out to the spring-house
and