He had had enough of land. By most wonderful fortune, he had been enabled to convert land into money. It was a miracle. Water had been turned into wine; he would not depend upon it happening again. His wife, who had always been submissive to him, ventured a single suggestion:
“Now would be a good time to straighten out matters with Hosea,” she remarked. Dick Hand looked at her coldly. She went on, uncomfortably: “I s’pose ’twouldn’t take so much. It wasn’t more’n $2,500, his share of father’s estate, was it?”
“He had no share of the estate,” her husband answered, shortly. “For God’s sake, Fanny, how often have I got to tell you that there wa’n’t nothing for him.” Under stress of emotion Mr. Hand used colloquial speech. “The will read plain: I was to have the farm and he was to have the rest to do as he pleased with, but after father’s debts had been paid there wa’n’t nothing. I stood ready to mortgage the farm if nec’ssary to give him what he’d oughter had,” said the man, virtuously and untruthfully--doubtless he thought his wife would readjust her recollection accordingly--“but he run away and went to sea. Stayed away for years, and me struggling with the farm.” Mr. Hand began gradually doing himself justice as a heavily laden, plodding, self-sacrificing figure. “When he finally showed up I offered to do what was right and he sneered at me, the ongrateful and onnatural brother. I says to Hosea, ‘I’m ready to forget and forgive. Bygones kin be bygones.’ He was courting Keturah Smiley. It was before her aunt died, and she hadn’t a cent. O’ course it was plain she’d have prop’ty some day, though no one could foresee she’d have all the Hawkins’s money. John Smiley hadn’t married that Mary Rogers then. So after I’d talked with Hosea and offered to do right by him--and more’n right, considering how he’d acted--I went to Keturah Smiley, and told her just how things stood.”
“Oh, Richard, you hadn’t ought to have done that,” Mrs. Hand murmured. “You had ought to have kept out of it.”
“Maybe I had, maybe I had,” retorted her husband. “But I was never one to reckon the consequences of doing a neighbourly act. I was trying to do the square thing, and more’n square, by Hosea. So I went to Keturah and I says to her: ‘Hosea won’t take this money. Of course,’ I says, ‘there’s no claim upon me for it, and never was a valid claim, but I always wanted to do the utmost by the boy and I want to be generous to the man; even if he has behaved badly and said things to me he oughter be ashamed of, and will be some day, I don’t hold it against him. I harbour no resentment,’ I says, ‘and if he won’t take this money I wish you would. Every one knows,’ I went on, ‘that you’ll have prop’ty some day and you can pay me back then if you feel you should. Or,’ I continued, wanting to make it as easy as I could for her, ‘you can give me your note o’ hand for the amount at six per cent., and I’ll promise you it won’t leave my hands. I’ll shave it for nobody,’ I says, reassuring her, ‘and nobody need ever know about it unless you want to tell Hosea about it afterward to bring him to a proper appreciation of the onnatural things he said to his brother.’”