[We and the World, Part I by Juliana Horatia Ewing]@TWC D-Link bookWe and the World, Part I CHAPTER IX 7/24
"It's a secret drawer--and look!" I did look.
The secret drawer was closely packed with rolls of thin leaflets, which we were old enough to recognize as bank-notes, and with little bags of wash-leather; and when Charlie opened the little bags they were filled with gold. There was a paper with the money, written by the old miser, to say that it was a codicil to his will, and that the money was all for Mrs.Wood. Why he had not left it to her in the will itself seemed very puzzling, but his lawyer (whom the Woods consulted about it) said that he always did things in a very eccentric way, but generally for some sort of reason, even if it were rather a freaky one, and that perhaps he thought that the relations would be less spiteful at first if they did not know about the money, and that Mrs.Wood would soon find it, if she used and valued his old press. I don't quite know whether there was any fuss with the relations about this part of the bequest, but I suppose the lawyer managed it all right, for the Woods got the money and gave up the school.
But they kept the old house, and bought some more land, and Walnut-tree Academy became Walnut-tree Farm once more.
And Cripple Charlie lived on with them, and he was so happy, it really seemed as if my dear mother was right when she said to my father, "I am so pleased, my dear, for that poor boy's sake, I can hardly help crying.
He's got two homes and two fathers and mothers, where many a young man has none, as if to make good his affliction to him." It puzzles me, even now, to think how my father could have sent Jem and me to Crayshaw's school.
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