"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 2000 pounds 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 3000 pounds 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.
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