Eight hundred pounds is, to be sure, a sum of money; but how, in
these circumstances, was it to be applied?

There came over from Cheltenham a bachelor uncle, aged about sixty.
This gentleman lived on an annuity of seventy pounds, which would
terminate when _he_ did. It might be reckoned to him for
righteousness that he spent the railway fare between Cheltenham and
Clevedon to attend his brother's funeral, and to speak a kind word
to his nieces. Influence he had none; initiative, very little. There
was no reckoning upon him for aid of any kind.

From Richmond in Yorkshire, in reply to a letter from Alice, wrote
an old, old aunt of the late Mrs. Madden, who had occasionally sent
the girls presents. Her communication was barely legible; it seemed
to contain fortifying texts of Scripture, but nothing in the way of
worldly counsel. This old lady had no possessions to bequeath. And,
as far as the girls knew, she was their mother's only surviving
relative.

The executor of the will was a Clevedon tradesman, a kind and
capable friend of the family for many years, a man of parts and
attainments superior to his station. In council with certain other
well-disposed persons, who regarded the Maddens' circumstances with
friendly anxiety, Mr. Hungerford (testamentary instruction allowing
him much freedom of action) decided that the three elder girls must
forthwith become self-supporting, and that the three younger should
live together in the care of a lady of small means, who offered to
house and keep them for the bare outlay necessitated. A prudent
investment of the eight hundred pounds might, by this arrangement,