Winston"--Winston is Bunter's name--and I tried to comfort her the best
I could. Afterwards, she got some small children to teach in a family,
and was half the day with them, and the occupation was good for her.

In the very first letter she had from Calcutta, Bunter told her he had
had a fall down the poop-ladder, and cut his head, but no bones broken,
thank God. That was all. Of course, she had other letters from him, but
that vagabond Bunter never gave me a scratch of the pen the solid eleven
months. I supposed, naturally, that everything was going on all right.
Who could imagine what was happening?

Then one day dear Mrs. Bunter got a letter from a legal firm in the
City, advising her that her uncle was dead--her old curmudgeon of an
uncle--a retired stockbroker, a heartless, petrified antiquity that had
lasted on and on. He was nearly ninety, I believe; and if I were to meet
his venerable ghost this minute, I would try to take him by the throat
and strangle him.

The old beast would never forgive his niece for marrying Bunter; and
years afterwards, when people made a point of letting him know that she
was in London, pretty nearly starving at forty years of age, he only
said: "Serve the little fool right!" I believe he meant her to starve.
And, lo and behold, the old cannibal died intestate, with no other
relatives but that very identical little fool. The Bunters were wealthy
people now.

Of course, Mrs. Bunter wept as if her heart would break. In any other
woman it would have been mere hypocrisy. Naturally, too, she wanted to
cable the news to her Winston in Calcutta, but I showed her, _Gazette_
in hand, that the ship was on the homeward-bound list for more than a