"Oh, Uncle Joe, you oughtn't even to think of such things," broke in
his niece by marriage. "You MUST think of cheerful---"

"You are good for years and years---" began Mr. Bingle.

"Don't interrupt me," said Uncle Joe irascibly. "I guess I know what
I'm talking about. I'm good for a couple of months at the outside. I'm
seventy years old and I feel two hundred. Why, dammit, old Clarence
Mortimer said I LOOK a hundred. To make the story short, Geoffrey said
he had arranged to pay you for my keep, no matter how long I lasted,
but he thought I was foolish not to take the thousand and go to some
quiet little place in the country--and wait. If--if it should happen
that I lived longer than the thousand would carry me, he'd see to it
that I had more. Only he didn't want me hanging around New York. That
was the point, d'you see? He very frankly said that he had always
sided with his mother against me, and that was all there was to it, so
far as he was concerned. And, see here, Tom, he said you had been down
to see him about me. Is that true?"

"Well, I--I thought perhaps--er--I might be able to bring about a
reconciliation," floundered Mr. Bingle.

"And you found that in the upper circles it is not considered good
form to be reconciled unless it pays, eh? What would be the sense in
becoming reconciled to a wreck of a father, who hasn't a dollar in the
world, after getting along so nicely for fifteen years without him?
No, it isn't done, Tom--it's not the thing. Geoffrey made no bones
about admitting that as far as he is concerned, I have been dead for
fifteen years. He---"