(whom she had taught him to reverence as the most
chivalric of gentlemen) had left him wholly dependent
upon her. It was a legal fiction, of course. He was the
heir--the crown prince. He had always been liberally
supplied with money at school and at Harvard. Her income
was large. No doubt the dear soul mismanaged the estates
fearfully, but now he would have leisure to take care of
them.

Now, the fact was that Colonel Waldeaux had been a
drunken spendthrift who had left nothing. The house and
farm always had belonged to his wife. She had supported
George by her own work all of his life. She could not
save money, but she had the rarer faculty of making it.
She had raised fine fruit and flowers for the
Philadelphia market; she had traded in high breeds of
poultry and cattle, and had invested her earnings
shrewdly. With these successes she had been able to
provide George with money to spend freely at college.
She lived scantily at home, never expecting any luxury or
great pleasure to come into her own life.

But two years ago a queer thing had happened to her. In
an idle hour she wrote a comical squib and sent it to a
New York paper. As everybody knows, fun, even vulgar
fun, sells high in the market. Her fun was not vulgar,
but coarse and biting enough to tickle the ears of the
common reader. The editor offered her a salary equal to
her whole income for a weekly column of such fooling.