"Oh, Mr. Webb!" she began.

"Andrew, come here," shrieked Polly from the other end of the hall.
"Come here, quick!"

It was not Webb's habit to move rapidly; but, fearing that his mother
was ill, he walked briskly to the parlor. Mrs. Webb, trembling as from a
recent nervous shock, her face flushed, a legal document in her lap, sat
in an upright chair, apparently in the best of health. Polly was on the
verge of hysterics.

"What do you think has happened?" she cried. "Tell him, ma; I can't."
Then she flung herself face downward on the sofa and kicked her heels
together.

"We are rich, Andrew," said Mrs. Webb, with a desperate effort at
calmness. "Your Uncle Sandy has been investing and doubling money these
twenty years. He has left one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,--fifty
thousand to each of us."

Andrew's knees gave way. He sat down suddenly. He had but one thought. A
radiant future flashed the little room out of vision. That would be his
which for five years he had desired with all the insidious force of a
fixed idea.

"Say something, Andrew, for heaven's sake!" cried Polly, "or I shall
scream. Fifty thousand dollars all my own! No more school, no more
dress-making! We'll all go to Europe. Ma says it's well invested, and we
shall have four thousand a year each. Goodness--goodness--goodness me!"