Frugal, or something less kind

My uncle was frugal, which is the word the family used while he was alive. He reused envelopes, kept a ledger of household spending in a hand so small it needed good light, and had not bought a new coat since the one he was buried in. After the funeral a cousin called him stingy, and the room went quiet in a way that suggested the word had been waiting its turn. The two words describe identical behaviour. Only one of them grants a motive you can respect. In fairness, the evidence pointed both ways. He gave generously to a hospital in the town he grew up in, anonymously and for thirty years, which nobody discovered until the paperwork was read. He also once returned a birthday present to a shop and told the child it had been the wrong size. I have come to think the argument about which word fits is not really about him. Frugal and stingy do not describe different acts; they describe the same act seen by someone who loved you and by someone who did not. The uncle is a fixed point. The word moves. He would, incidentally, have found this whole discussion extravagant. All those sentences, when a number would have done.