The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

OR THE LAST TENANT. 85
Hannah Morrison was never known to expend a single
copper on the supply of her own meagre household, or
necessary wants. Could those who speculated so curiously
on the disposal of the money, which, it was generally understood,
young Edward brought home to his foster mother,
have seen its actual destination, they would have exchanged
the sobriquet of miser, it may be, for that of prodigal; for
what other word could embody the profuse generosity with
which the poor solitary would pour out into her darling's
hand the accumulated sums which she had carefully heaped
up in his absence, only to return to him again on the eve
of his departure for a fresh voyage, when extravagance had
reduced the young sai.!-or to his last shilling?
She never asked how . .he bestowed' these sums, but she
hung with almost childish delight over his new jackets or
warm dreadnought wrappers; and then, when his sea chest
was freshly stowed and packed full of new and handsome
" riggings," she would sigh to think she had no more savings
wherewith to purchase him a smart purl:1e or a fine
neckerchief, as a final parting token of her inexhaustible
love. The young man, whose generous nature was warped,
but not destroyed, by his brother's injurious inlluence, accepted
these long-hoarded savings with reluctance, often
with a sense of shame, but only when he perceived old
Hannah's settled determination in the appropriation of her
money, and upon her solemn assurance that she never
wanted for any thing. It was true :he would look round
. the desolate ruin which sheltered the faithful prop of his
fallen house, and sigh when he remembered how far the
sums he had so prolligately lavished would have gone to
repair the once stately home of his forefathers. and have
converted the tottering walls into the life and light C?f longforgotten
architectural beauty; but it was not to be. There
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