Sippican again

She was very old when that awful day christened Black Friday took her fortune, just like the famine had taken her family. Her son sat with her on the simple wooden settee she still favored, like a pew in her own church. \”It has St. Patrick\’s clover on it, and to put a cushion on it would be extravagance itself.\” He told her, gently, that he had lost her money, all of it –over a million dollars — in one afternoon.

\”What a blessing!\” she said.

Her son, now grown grey himself, and ruined along with his mother, couldn\’t comprehend.

The man\’s got it, gotta say.