Don’t you worry.”

The sick man smiled.

“Of course!” he gasped, his breath nearly gone. “Good-bye!” His eyes searched the room.

“Jennie, too, and the children!”

But Jennie had slipped away suddenly.

Perhaps she had gone to her room to cry. Perhaps Jennie was fond of Father in her way after all, thought Marion.

But Jennie had not gone to cry. Jennie was stealing stealthily down the stairs, slipping like a ghost into the little den that had belonged to her father-in-law, where his big roll-top desk stood and his old desk chair, the walls lined with books. She closed the door carefully, snapped on the light, and pulled down the shade, then looked furtively around. It was not the first time that Jennie had visited that room.

Since her father-in-law had been ill, and Marion closely held in his service, she had managed to make herself thoroughly familiar with every corner of the house. She was not going in search of something. She knew exactly what she was after.

She took out a key from her pocket and went over to the desk. The key had been in her pocket for a week. She had found it while putting away things in her father-in-law’s closet. It had been on a key ring with other keys. She had taken it off of the ring one day when Marion was downstairs preparing some food for the invalid while he was asleep.

Jennie opened the right-hand lower drawer of the desk and moved some account books over. Then she took out a tin box from the back end of the drawer. She fit the key into the lock and opened the box. Breathlessly she turned over the neat envelopes carefully labeled “DEED OF THE HOUSE,” “TAX RECEIPTS,” “WATER TAX,” and the like, till she came to the envelope labeled “MY WILL.”

Jennie took this out, quickly put the rest back, locked the box, returned it to the drawer from which she had taken it, replaced the books, and closed the drawer. Then she picked up the envelope and held it in her hand for an instant, an almost frightened look in her eyes, as if she were weighing the possibilities of what she was about to do. She did not open the envelope and read the will, for she had already done that a week ago. Every word and syllable of the neatly written document was graven on her soul, and she had spent nights of waking, going over and over the brief paragraphs indignantly. The old man had no right to discriminate between his children. He had no right to leave the house entirely to Marion. If there were no will—that is, if no will were found, why, the law would divide the property. Tom would look after Marion, of course, in any case. But Tom should have the right to decide things. He should not be hindered with a girl’s whims. She could not see that what she was about to do was in any way wrong. No harm would come to her sister-in-law. In any case she would be cared for. It would simply smooth out things for Tom. And it was perfectly right.

Having shut her thin lips firmly over this decision, she opened the upper right-hand drawer, pulled it entirely out, and laid it on the desk. Then she reached far in and laid the envelope containing the will carefully at the back of the opening, replacing the drawer and shutting it firmly again, even turning the key that was in the lock.

Having done this, she snapped out the light and groped her way to the door, unlocking it and stealing back into the hall.