"If," she continued, "I am mistaken, the worst that can happen is
that he will come into a larger sum at twenty-eight instead of a
smaller sum at, say, twenty-three, for I would never trust him with it
earlier, and if he knows nothing about it he will not be unhappy for
the want of it."
She begged me to take L2000 in return for the trouble I should
have in taking charge of the boy's estate, and as a sign of the
testatrix's hope that I would now and again look after him while he
was still young. The remaining L3000 I was to pay in legacies and
annuities to friends and servants.
In vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with her on the
unusual and hazardous nature of this arrangement. We told her that
sensible people will not take a more sanguine view concerning human
nature than the Courts of Chancery do. We said, in fact, everything
that anyone else would say. She admitted everything, but urged that
her time was short, that nothing would induce her to leave her money
to her nephew in the usual way. "It is an unusually foolish will," she
said, "but he is an unusually foolish boy"; and she smiled quite
merrily at her little sally. Like all the rest of her family, she
was very stubborn when her mind was made up.
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