Now Mrs. Howard, the mother of two of the boys and aunt to the third
little fellow, was a widow and very poor, and often found it a hard
task to provide for her "three boys," as she called them, for, having
adopted her little orphan nephew, she always treated him as her own
son. She had sometimes thought it strange that old Mrs. Howard should
not have offered to provide for Leslie herself but she had never done
so, and at last Mrs. Howard had ceased to expect it. But now, right at
the end of her letter, Grandmamma Howard wrote:--
"I have been thinking that perhaps it would come a little hard on you
to support not only your own two boys, but poor Alice's son, and so,
on my return to England, I propose, if you are willing, to adopt one
of them, for I am a lonely old woman and shall be glad of a young face
about me again."
After thinking the matter over, Mrs. Howard decided she would say
nothing about their grandmother's intention to the boys, as she
thought that it was just possible she might change her mind again.
Time passed on, and winter set in, and full of the delights of
skating, the boys forgot all about the expected arrival of their
grandmother.
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