Ruby's Reward — page 321: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

after he found us, our destitution was at an end, for he provided for our every want, giving my mother every luxury and delicacy which money could buy; and when at last all was over, and I was an orphan, he took me to his own home, and treated me like his own son as long as Le lived.” “Bless the man tor a noble deed!” ejaculated madam, with considerable emotion. Then she ad- ded: “But have you never tried to find your father’s relatives ?”’ “No,” Walter answered, flushing crimson. “I did beg my mother once, when we were so very poor, to write to them and ask them to give us a little help. But she would not. “*Tf they refused to recognized their own son be- cause he married me,’ she said gently, but firmly— ‘it they did not care enough, when I sent them word that he was dead, to come and take a last look at him, as would not surely heed my feeble cry now for gid.’ “T have thought," Walter resumed, after a thought- ful pause, * that she might, perhaps, have relented, and asked them to care for me after she was gone, if Mr. Carpenter had not come to our relief; ‘but he promised that I never should want for any good thing, and I know that she died feeling perfectly ¢ con- tent about me. I have often wondered, though——” “Well, what have you wondered 2” madam asked, as he hesitated, and fell into a reverie. “When Uncle Ralph was dying,”’ Walter said, arous- ing himself, “he caledine to his bedside, and said there were some things that he wished to talk to me about. He said there was something that my mother wished hin to tell me when Ishould< come of age; but he broke otf there, and remarked he wanted to settle about my future first, and then, before he could tinish, that last shock seized him, and he never spoke again. I have often wondered what it was that my mother wanted him to tell me, It may have been something about ny father’s friends, or some mes- sage that my father may have wished her to, sive me when I should be old enough to nderst it apeoecas