CHAPTER IX.
Aunt Mercy had not introduced me to Miss Black as the daughter of Locke Morgeson, the richest man in Surrey, but simply as her niece.
Her pride prevented her from making any exhibition of my antecedents, which was wise, considering that I had none.

My grandfather, John Morgeson, was a nobody,--merely a "Co."; and though my great-grandfather, Locke Morgeson, was worthy to be called a Somebody, it was not his destiny to make a stir in the world.

Many of the families of my Barmouth schoolmates had the fulcrum of a moneyed grandfather.

The knowledge of the girls did not extend to that period in the family history when its patriarchs started in the pursuit of Gain.

Elmira Sawyer, one of Miss Black's pupils, never heard that her grandfather "Black Peter," as he was called, had made excursions, in an earlier part of his life, on the River Congo, or that he was familiar with the soundings of Loango Bay.