Then he paid them one short and peremptory visit, during which he was able to impress upon them his importance, his reasons for changing his name, which they could not now remember, and the great necessity which this made for them not to come near him as their nephew.

They had tried to do what he asked, but it had been hard.

"Charity," Miss Thankful proceeded to bewail with a forgetfulness of her own share in the matter, "had not been able to keep her eyes long off the house which held, as she supposed, our double treasure." So this was all! Nothing to aid me; nothing to aid Mayor Packard.

Rising in my disappointment, I prepared to leave.

I had sufficient self-control and I hope good feeling not to add to their distress at this time by any unnecessary revelations of a past they were ignorant of, or the part this unhappy nephew of theirs had played and still promised to play in the lives of their immediate neighbors.
Miss Thankful squeezed my hand and Miss Charity gave me a kiss; then as she saw her sister looking aside, whispered in my ear "I want to show you something, all of Johnnie's little toys and the keepsakes he sent us when he was a good boy and loved his aunts.