Patsy Doyle,
however, proved exceptionally frank and genuine, and when Aunt Jane at
last died and it was found she had no estate to bequeath, Patsy proved
the one bright star in the firmament of disappointment. Supposing Uncle
John to be poor, she insisted upon carrying him to New York with her and
sharing with him the humble tenement room in which she lived with her
father--a retired veteran who helped pay the family expenses by keeping
books for a mercantile firm, while Patsy worked in a hair-dresser's
shop.
It was now that Uncle John proved a modern fairy godfather to Aunt
Jane's nieces--who were likewise his own nieces. The three girls had
little in common except their poverty, Elizabeth De Graf being the
daughter of a music teacher, in Cloverton, Ohio, while Louise Merrick
lived with her widowed mother in a social atmosphere of the second class
in New York, where the two women frankly intrigued to ensnare for Louise
a husband who had sufficient means to ensure both mother and daughter a
comfortable home. In spite of this worldly and unlovely ambition, which
their circumstances might partially excuse, Louise, who was but
seventeen, had many good and womanly qualities, could they have been
developed in an atmosphere uninfluenced by the schemes of her vain and
selfish mother.
Uncle John, casting aside the mask of poverty, came to the relief of all
three girls.
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