"Why, Father, the privateers must have done well, indeed!" Dick said,
looking round the handsome room.
"I have nothing to grumble at, on that score, Dick, though they have
not been so lucky the last two years. But it is not their profits that
induced us to move here. You saw Annie was in mourning. Her father
died, nearly a year ago, and at her earnest request, as he said in his
will, appointed us her guardians until she came of age, which will be
in a few months now. As he had no near relations, he left the whole of
his property to her; and having been in India in the days when, under
Warren Hastings, there were good pickings to be obtained, it amounted
to a handsome fortune. She said that she should come and live with us,
at any rate until she became of age; and as that house of ours, though
a comfortable place, was hardly the sort of house for an heiress, she
herself proposed that we should take a larger house between us.
"And so, here we are. We shall stay here through the winter, and then
we are going down to her place at Plymouth for the summer. What we
shall do, afterwards, is not settled. That must depend upon a variety
of things."
"She has grown much prettier than I ever thought she would do," Dick
said.
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