Bennett Arnold
These Twain
"Eh!" said she, in a somewhat falsetto voice, jerky and excessively feeble. "I thought-I'd-lost you." Her hand was groping about.
"No, no," said Edwin, leaning over between young Clara and Rupert.
"She's feeling for your hand, Edwin," said Clara.
He quickly took her hot, brittle fingers; they seemed to cling to his for essential support.
"Have you-been to the works?" Auntie Hamps asked the question as though the answer to it would end all trouble.
"No," he said. "Not yet."
"Eh! That's right! That's right!" she murmured, apparently much impressed by a new proof of Edwin's wisdom.
"I've had a sleep."
"What?"
"I've been having a sleep," he repeated more loudly.
"Eh! That's right! That's right… I'm so glad-the children have been to see me… Amy-did you kiss me?" Auntie Hamps looked at Amy hard, as if for the first time.
"Yes, Auntie."
And then Amy began to cry.
"Better take them away," Edwin suggested aside to Albert. "It's as much as she can stand. The parson's only just gone, you know."
Albert, obedient, gave the word of command, and the room was full of movement.
"Eh, children-children!" Auntie Hamps appealed.
Everybody stood stockstill, gazing attendant.
"Eh, children, bless you all for coming. If you grow up-as good as your mother-it's all I ask-all I ask… Your mother and I-have never had a cross word-have we, mother?"
"No, auntie," said Clara, with a sweet, touching smile that accentuated the fragile charm of her face.
"Never-since mother was-as tiny as you are."
Auntie Hamps looked up at the ceiling during a few strained breaths, and then smiled for an instant at the departing children, who filed out of the room. Rupert loitered behind, gazing at his mother. The mere contrast between the infant so healthy and the dying old woman was pathetic to Edwin. Clara, with an exquisite reassuring gesture and smile picked up the stout Rupert and kissed him and carried him to the door, while Auntie Hamps looked at mother and son, ecstatic.
"Edwin!"
"Yes, Auntie?"
They were alone now. She had not loosed his hand. Her voice was very faint, and he bent over her still lower in the alcove of the curtains, which seemed to stretch very high above them.
"Have you heard from Hilda?"
"Not yet. By the second post, perhaps."
"It's about George's eyes-isn't it?"
"Yes."
"She's done quite right-quite right. It's just-like Hilda. I do hope-and pray-the boy's eyesight-is safe."
"Oh yes!" said Edwin. "Safe enough."
"You really think so?" She had the air of hanging on his words.
He nodded.
"What a blessing!" She sighed deeply with relief.
Edwin thought:
"I believe her relations must have been her passion." And he was impressed by the intensity of that passion.
"Edwin!"
"Yes, Auntie."
"Has-that girl-gone yet?"
"Who?" he questioned, and added more softly: "Minnie d'you mean?" His own voice sounded too powerful, too healthy and dominating, in comparison with her failing murmurs.
Auntie Hamps nodded. "Yes-Minnie."
"Not yet."
"She's going?"
"Yes."
"Because I can't trust-Maggie-to see to it."
"I'll see to it."
"Has she done-the silvers-d'you know?"
"She's doing them," answered Edwin, who thought it would be best to carry out the deception with artistic completeness.
"She needn't have her dinner before she goes."
"No?"
"No." Auntie Hamps's face and tone hardened. "Why should she?"
"All right."
"And if she asks-for her wages-tell her-I say there's nothing due-under the circumstances."
"All right, Auntie," Edwin agreed, desperate.
Maggie, followed by Clara, softly entered the room. Auntie Hamps glanced at them with a certain cautious suspicion, as though one or other of them was capable of thwarting her in the matter of Minnie. Then her eyes closed, and Edwin was aware of a slackening of her hold on his hand. The doctor, who called half an hour later, said that she might never speak again, and she never did. Her last conscious moments were moments of satisfaction.
Edwin slowly released his hand.
"Where's Albert?" he asked Clara, merely for the sake of saying something.
"He's taking the children home, and then he's going to the works. He ought to have gone long ago. There's a dreadful upset there."
"I suppose there is," said Edwin, who had forgotten that the fly-wheel accident must have almost brought Albert's manufactory to a standstill. And he wondered whether it was the family instinct, or anxiety about Auntie Hamps's will, that had caused Albert to absent himself from business on such a critical morning.
"I ought to go too," he muttered, as a full picture of a lithographic establishment masterless swept into his mind.
"Have you telegraphed to Hilda?" Clara demanded.
"No."
"Haven't you!"
"What's the use?"
"Well, I should have thought you would."
"Oh, no!" he said, falsely mild. "I shall write." He was immensely glad that Hilda was not present in the house to complicate still further the human equation.
Maggie was silently examining the face obscured in the gloom of the curtains.
Instead of remaining late that night at the works, Edwin came back to the house before six o'clock. He had had word that the condition of Tertius Ingpen was still unchanged. Clara had gone home to see to her children's evening meal. Maggie sat alone in the darkened bedroom, where Auntie Hamps, her features a mere pale blur between the over-arching curtains, still withheld the secret of her soul's reality from the world. Even in the final unconsciousness there was something grandiose which lingered from her crowning magnificent deceptions and obstinate effort to safeguard the structure of society. The sublime obstinacy of the woman had transformed hypocrisy into a virtue, and not the imminence of the infinite unknown had sufficed to make her apostate to the steadfast principles of her mortal career.
"What about to-night?" Edwin asked.
"Oh! Clara and I will manage."
There was a tap at the door. Edwin opened it. Minnie, abashed but already taking courage, stood there blinking with a letter in her hand. "Ah!" he breathed. Hilda's scrawling calligraphy was on the envelope.
The letter read: "Darling boy. George has influenza, Charlie says. Temp. 102 anyway. So of course he can't go out to-morrow. I knew this morning there was something wrong with him. Janet and Charlie send their love. Your ever loving wife, Hilda."
He was exceedingly uplifted and happy and exhausted. Hilda's handwriting moved him. The whole missive was like a personal emanation from her. It lived with her vitality. It fought for the mastery of the household interior against the mysterious, far-reaching spell of the dying woman. "Your loving wife." Never before, during their marriage, had she written a phrase so comforting and exciting. He thought: "My faith in her is never worthy of her." And his faith leaped up and became worthy of her.
"George has got influenza," he said indifferently.
"George! But influenza's very serious for him, isn't it?" Maggie showed alarm.
"Why should it be?"
"Considering he nearly died of it at Orgreaves'!"
"Oh! Then! … He'll be all right."
But Maggie had put fear into Edwin, – a superstitious fear. Influenza indeed might be serious for George. Suppose he died of it. People did die of influenza. Auntie Hamps-Tertius Ingpen-and now George! … All these anxieties mingling with his joy in the thought of Hilda! And all the brooding rooms of the house waiting in light or in darkness for a decisive event!
"I must go and lie down," he said. He could contain no more sensations.
"Do," said Maggie.
IV
At two o'clock in the afternoon of Auntie Hamps's funeral, a procession consisting of the following people moved out of the small, stuffy dining-room of her house across the lobby into the drawing-room: – the Rev. Christian Flowerdew, the Rev. Guy Cliffe (second minister), the aged Reverend Josiah Higginbotham (supernumerary minister), the chapel and the circuit stewards, the doctor, Edwin, Maggie, Clara, Bert and young Clara (being respectively the eldest nephew and the eldest niece of the deceased), and finally Albert Benbow; Albert came last because he had constituted himself the marshal of the ceremonies. In the drawing-room the coffin with its hideous brass plate and handles lay upon two chairs, and was covered with white wreaths. At the head of the coffin was placed a small table with a white cloth; on the cloth a large inlaid box (in which Auntie Hamps had kept odd photographs), and on the box a black book. The drawn blinds created a beautiful soft silvery gloom which solemnised everything and made even the clumsy carving on the coffin seem like the finest antique work. The three ministers ranged themselves round the small table; the others stood in an irregular horseshoe about the coffin, nervous, constrained, and in dread of catching each other's glances. Mr. Higginbotham, by virtue of his age, began to read the service, and Auntie Hamps became "she," "her," and "our sister," – nameless. In the dining-room she had been the paragon of all excellences, – in the drawing-room, packed securely and neatly in the coffin, she was a sinner snatched from the consequences of sin by a miracle of divine sacrifice.
The interment thus commenced was the result of a compromise between two schools of funebrial manners sharply divergent. Edwin, immediately after the demise, had become aware of influences far stronger than those which had shaped the already half-forgotten interment of old Darius Clayhanger into a form repugnant to him. Both Albert and Clara, but especially Albert, had assumed an elaborate funeral, with a choral service at the Wesleyan chapel, numerous guests, a superb procession, and a substantial and costly meal in the drawing-room to conclude. Edwin had at once and somewhat domineeringly decided: no guests whatever outside the family, no service at the chapel, every rite reduced to its simplest. When asked why, he had no logical answer. He soon saw that it would be impossible not to invite a minister and the doctor. He yielded, intimidated by the sacredness of custom. Then not only the Wesleyan chapel but its Sunday School sent dignified emissaries, who so little expected a No to their honorific suggestions that the No was unuttered and unutterable. Certain other invitations were agreed upon. The Sunday School announced that it would "walk," and it prepared to "walk."
All the emissaries spoke of Auntie Hamps as a saint; they all averred with restrained passion that her death was an absolutely irreparable loss to the circuit; and their apparent conviction was such that Edwin's whole estimate of Auntie Hamps and of mankind was momentarily shaken. Was it conceivable that none of these respectable people had arrived at the truth concerning Auntie Hamps? Had she deceived them all? Or were they simply rewarding her in memory for her ceaseless efforts on behalf of the safety of society?
Edwin stood like a rock against a service in the Wesleyan Chapel. Clara cunningly pointed out to him that the Wesleyan Chapel would be heated for the occasion, whereas the chapel at the cemetery, where scores of persons had caught their deaths in the few years of its existence, was never heated. His reply showed genius. He would have the service at the house itself. The decision of the chief mourner might be regretted, and was regretted, but none could impugn its correctitude, nor its social distinction; some said approvingly that it was 'just like' Edwin. Thenceforward the arrangements went more smoothly, the only serious difficulty being about the route to the cemetery. Edwin was met by a saying that "the last journey must be the longest," which meant that the cortège must go up St. Luke's Square and along the Market Place past the Town Hall and the Shambles, encountering the largest number of sightseers, instead of taking the nearest way along Wedgwood Street. Edwin chose Wedgwood Street.
In the discussions, Maggie was neutral, thus losing part of the very little prestige which she possessed. Clara and Albert considered Edwin to be excessively high-handed. But they were remarkably moderate in criticism, for the reason that no will had been found. Maggie and Clara had searched the most secret places of the house for a will, in vain. All that they had found was a brass and copper paper-knife wrapped in tissue-paper and labelled "For Edwin, with Auntie's love," and a set of tortoise-shell combs equally wrapped in tissue-paper and labelled "For Maggie, with Auntie's love." Naught for Clara! Naught for the chicks.
Albert (who did all the running about) had been to see Mr. Julian Pidduck, the Wesleyan solicitor, who had a pew at the back of the chapel and was famous for invariably arriving at morning service half an hour late. Mr. Pidduck knew of no will. Albert had also been to the Bank-that is to say, the Bank, at the top of St. Luke's Square, whose former manager had been a buttress of Wesleyanism. The new manager (after nearly eight years he was still called the "new" manager, because the previous manager, old Lovatt, had been in control for nearly thirty years), Mr. Breeze, was ill upstairs on the residential floor with one of his periodic attacks of boils; the cashier, however, had told Albert that certain securities, but no testament, were deposited at the Bank; he had offered to produce the securities, but only to Edwin, as the nearest relative. Albert had then secretly looked up the pages entitled "Intestates' Estates" in Whitaker's Almanac and had discovered that whereas Auntie Hamps being intestate, her personal property would be divided equally between Edwin, Maggie, and Clara, her real property would go entirely to Edwin. (Edwin also had secretly looked up the same pages.) This gross injustice nearly turned Albert from a Tory into a Land Laws reformer. It accounted for the comparative submissiveness of Clara and Albert before Edwin's arrogance as the arbiter of funerals. They hoped that, if he was humoured, he might forego his rights. They could not credit, and Edwin maliciously did not tell them, that no matter what they did he was incapable of insisting on such rights.
While the ministers succeeded each other in the conduct of the service, each after his different manner, Edwin scrutinised the coffin, and the wreaths, and the cards inscribed with mournful ecstatic affection that nestled amid the flowers, and the faces of the audience, and his thought was: "This will soon be over now!" Beneath his gloomy and wearied expression he was unhappy, but rather hopeful and buoyant, looking forward to approaching felicity. His reflections upon the career of Auntie Hamps were kind, and utterly uncritical; he wondered what her spirit was doing in that moment; the mystery ennobled his mind. Yet he wondered also whether the ministers believed all they were saying, why the superintendent minister read so well and prayed with such a lack of distinction, how much the wreaths cost, whether the Sunday School deputation had silently arrived in the street, and why men in overcoats and hatless looked so grotesque in a room, and why when men and women were assembled on a formal occasion the women always clung together.
Probing his left-hand pocket, he felt a letter. He had received it that morning from Hilda. George was progressing very well, and Charlie Orgreave had actually brought the oculist with his apparatus to see him at Charlie's house. Charlie would always do impossibilities for Hilda. It was Charlie who had once saved George's life-so Hilda was convinced. The oculist had said that George's vision was normal, and that he must not wear glasses, but that on account of a slight weakness he ought to wear a shade at night in rooms which were lighted from the top. In a few days Hilda and George would return. Edwin anticipated their arrival with an impatience almost gleeful, so anxious was he to begin the new life with Hilda. Her letters had steadily excited him. He pictured the intimacies of their reunion. He saw her ideally. His mind rose to the finest manifestations of her individuality, and the inconveniences of that individuality grew negligible. Withal, he was relieved that George's illness had kept her out of Bursley during the illness, death, and burial of Auntie Hamps. Had she been there, he would have had three persons to manage instead of two, and he could not have asserted himself with the same freedom.
And then there was a sound of sobbing outside the door. Minnie, sharing humbly but obstinately in the service according to her station, had broken down in irrational grief at the funeral of the woman whose dying words amounted to an order for her execution. Edwin, though touched, could have smiled; and he felt abashed before the lofty and incomprehensible marvels of human nature. Several outraged bent heads twisted round in the direction of the door, but the minister intrepidly continued with the final prayer. Maggie slipped out, the door closed, and the sound of sobbing receded.
After the benediction Albert resumed full activity, while the remainder of the company stared and cleared their throats without exchanging a word. The news that the hearse and coaches had not arrived helped them to talk a little. The fault was not that of the undertaker, but Edwin's. The service had finished too soon, because in response to Mr. Flowerdew's official question: "How much time do you give me?" he had replied: "Oh! A quarter of an hour," whereas Albert the organiser had calculated upon half an hour. The representatives of the Sunday School were already lined up on the pavement and on the opposite pavement and in the roadway were knots of ragged, callously inquisitive spectators. The vehicles could at length be described on the brow of Church Street. They descended the slope in haste. The four mutes nipped down with agility from the hammer cloths, hung their greasy top-hats on the ornamental spikes of the hearse, and sneaked grimly into the house. In a second the flowers were shifted from the coffin, and with startling accomplished swiftness the coffin was darted out of the room without its fraudulent brass handles even being touched, and down the steps into the hearse, and the flowers replaced. The one hitch was due to Edwin attempting to get into the first coach instead of waiting for the last one. Albert, putting on his new black gloves, checked him. The ministers and the doctor had to go first, the chapel officials next, and the chief mourners-Edwin, Albert, and Bert-had the third coach. The women stayed behind at the door, frowning at the murmurous crowd of shabby idlers. Albert gave a supreme glance at the vehicles and the walkers, made a signal, and joined Edwin and Bert in the last coach, buttoning his left hand glove. Edwin would only hold his gloves in his hand. The cortège moved. Rain was threatening, and the street was muddy.
At the cemetery it was raining, and the walkers made a string of glistening umbrellas; only the paid mutes had no umbrellas. Near the gates, under an umbrella, stood a man with a protruding chin and a wiry grey moustache. He came straight to Edwin and shook hands. It was Mr. Breeze, the Bank manager. His neck, enveloped in a white muffler, showed a large excrescence behind, and he kept his head very carefully in one position.
He said, in his defiant voice:
"I only had the news this morning, and I felt that I should pay the last tribute of respect to the deceased. I had known her in business and privately for many years."
His greeting of Albert was extremely reserved, and Albert showed him a meek face. Albert's overdraft impaired the cordiality of their relations.
"Sorry to hear you've got your old complaint!" said Edwin, astounded at this act of presence by the terrible bank-manager.
Vehicles, by some municipal caprice, were forbidden to enter the cemetery. And in the rain, between the stone-perpetuated great names of the town's history-the Boultons, the Lawtons, the Blackshaws, the Beardmores, the Dunns, the Longsons, the Hulmes, the Suttons, the Greenes, the Gardiners, the Calverts, the Dawsons, the Brindleys, the Baineses, and the Woods-the long procession preceded by Auntie Hamps tramped for a third of a mile along the asphalted path winding past the chapel to the graveside. And all the way Mr. Breeze, between Edwin and Albert, with Bert a yard to the rear, talked about boils, and Edwin said "Yes" and "No," and Albert said nothing. And at the graveside the three ministers removed their flat round hats and put on skull-caps while skilfully holding their umbrellas aloft.
And while Mr. Flowerdew was reading from a little book in the midst of the large encircling bare-headed crowd with umbrellas, and the gravedigger with absolute precision accompanied his words with three castings of earth into the hollow of the grave, Edwin scanned an adjoining tombstone, which marked the family vault of Isaac Plant, a renowned citizen. He read, chased in gilt letters on the Aberdeen granite, the following lines:
"Sacred to the memory of Adelaide Susan, wife of Isaac Plant, died 27th June, 1886, aged 47 years. And of Mary, wife of Isaac Plant, died 11th December, 1890, aged 33 years. And of Effie Harriet, wife of Isaac Plant, died 9th December, 1893, aged 27 years. The Flower Fadeth. And of Isaac Plant, died 9th February, 1894, aged 79 years. I know that my Redeemer Liveth." And the passionate career of the aged and always respectable rip seemed to Edwin to have been a wondrous thing. The love of life was in Isaac Plant. He had risen above death again and again. After having detested him, Edwin now liked him on the tombstone.
And even in that hilly and bleak burial ground, with melancholy sepulchral parties and white wind-blown surplices dotted about the sodden slopes, and the stiff antipathetic multitude around the pit which held Auntie Hamps, and the terrible seared, harsh, grey-and-brown industrial landscape of the great smoking amphitheatre below, Edwin felt happy in the sensation of being alive and of having to contend with circumstance. He was inspired by the legend of Isaac Plant and of Auntie Hamps, who in very different ways had intensely lived. And he thought in the same mood of Tertius Ingpen, who was now understood to be past hope. If he died, – well, he also had intensely lived! And he thought too of Hilda, whose terrific vitality of emotion had caused him such hours of apprehension and exasperation. He exulted in all those hours. It seemed almost a pity that, by reason of his new-found understanding of Hilda, such hours would not recur. His heart flew impatiently forward into the future, to take up existence with her again.
When the ministers pocketed their skull-caps and resumed their hats, everybody except Edwin appeared to feel relief in turning away from the grave. Faces brightened; footsteps were more alert. In the drawing-room Edwin had thought: "It will soon be over," and every face near him was saying, "It is over"; but now that it was over Edwin had a pang of depression at the eagerness with which all the mourners abandoned Auntie Hamps to her strange and desolate grave amid the sinister population of corpses.
He lingered, glancing about. Mr. Breeze also lingered, and then in his downright manner squarely approached Edwin.
"I'll walk down with ye to the gates," said he.
"Yes," said Edwin.
Mr. Breeze moved his head round with care. Their umbrellas touched. In front of them the broken units of a procession tramped in disorder, chatting.
"I've got that will for you," said Mr. Breeze in a confidential tone.
"What will?"
"Mrs. Hamps's."
"But your cashier said there was no will at your place!"
"My cashier doesn't know everything," remarked Mr. Breeze. And in his voice was the satisfied grimness of a true native of the district, and a Longshaw man. "Mrs. Hamps deposited her will with me as much as a friend as anything else. The fact is I had it in my private safe. I should have called with it this morning, but I knew that you'd be busy, and what's more I can't go paying calls of a morning. Here it is."
Mr. Breeze drew an endorsed foolscap envelope from the breast pocket of his overcoat, and handed it to Edwin.
"Thanks," said Edwin very curtly. He could be as native as any native. But beneath the careful imperturbability of his demeanour he was not unagitated.
"I've got a receipt for you to sign," said Mr. Breeze. "It's slipped into the envelope. Here's an ink-pencil."
Edwin comprehended that he must stand still in the rain and sign a receipt for the will as best he could under an umbrella. He complied. Mr. Breeze said no more.
"Good-bye, Mr. Breeze," said Edwin at the gates.
"Good-day to you, Mr. Clayhanger."
The coaches trotted down the first part of the hill into Bursley but as soon as the road became a street, with observant houses on either side, the pace was reduced to a proper solemnity. Edwin was amused and even uplifted by the thought of the will in his pocket; his own curiosity concerning it diverted him; he anticipated complications with a light heart. To Albert he said nothing on the subject, which somehow he could not bring himself to force bluntly into the conversation. Albert talked about his misfortunes at the works, including the last straw of the engine accident; and all the time he was vaguely indicating reasons-the presence of Bert in the carriage necessitated reticence-for his default in the interest-paying to Maggie. At intervals he gave out that he was expecting much from Bert, who at the New Year was to leave school for the works-and Bert taciturn behind his spectacles had to seem loyal, earnest, and promising.
As they approached the Clowes Hospital Edwin saw a nurse in a bonnet, white bow, and fluent blue robe emerging from the shrubbery and putting up an umbrella. She looked delightful, – at once modest and piquant, until he saw that she was the night-nurse; and even then she still looked delightful. He thought: "I'd no idea she could look like that!" and began to admit to himself that perhaps in his encounters with her in the obscurity of the night he had not envisaged the whole of her personality. Involuntarily he leaned forward. Her eyes were scintillant and active, and they caught his. He saluted; she bowed, with a most inviting, challenging and human smile.
"There's Nurse Faulkner!" he exclaimed to Albert. "I must just ask her how Ingpen is. I haven't heard to-day." He made as if to lean out of the window.
"But you can't stop the procession!" Albert protested in horror, unable to conceive such an enormity.
"I'll just slip out!" said Edwin, guiltily.
He spoke to the coachman and the coach halted.
In an instant he was on the pavement.
"Drive on," he instructed the coachman, and to the outraged Albert: "I'll walk down."
Nurse Faulkner, apparently flattered by the proof of her attractiveness, stopped and smiled upon the visitor. She had a letter in one hand.
"Good afternoon, nurse."
"Good morning, Mr. Clayhanger. I'm just going out for my morning walk before breakfast," said she.
She had dimples. These dimples quite ignored Edwin's mourning and the fact that he had quitted a funeral in order to speak to her.
"How is Mr. Ingpen to-day?" Edwin asked. He could read on the envelope in her hand the words "The Rev."
She grew serious, and said in a low, cheerful tone: "I think he's going on pretty well."
Edwin was startled.
"D'you mean he's getting better?"
"Slowly. He's taking food more easily. He was undoubtedly better this morning. I haven't seen him since, of course."
"But the matron seemed to think-" He stopped, for the dimples began to reappear.
"Matron always fears the worst, you know," said Nurse Faulkner, not without irony.
"Does she?"
The matron had never held out hope to Edwin; and he had unquestioningly accepted her opinion. It had not occurred to him that the matron of a hospital could be led astray by her instinctive unconscious appetite for gloom and disaster.
The nurse nodded.
"Then you think he'll pull through?"
"I'm pretty sure he will. But of course I've not seen the doctor-I mean since the first night."
"I'm awfully glad."
"His brother came over from Darlington to see him yesterday evening, you know."
"Yes. I just missed him."
The nurse gave a little bow as she moved up the road.
"Just going to the pillar-box," she explained. "Dreadful weather we're having!"
He left her, feeling that he had made a new acquaintance.
"She's in love with a parson, I bet," he said to himself. And he had to admit that she had charm-when off duty.
The news about Ingpen filled him with bright joy. Everything was going well. Hilda would soon be home; George's eyes were not seriously wrong; the awful funeral was over; and his friend was out of danger-marvellously restored to him. Then he thought of the will. He glanced about to see whether anybody of importance was observing him. There was nobody. The coaches were a hundred yards in front. He drew out the envelope containing the will, managed to extract the will from the envelope, and opened the document, – not very easily because he was holding his umbrella.
A small printed slip fluttered to the muddy pavement. He picked it up; it was a printed form of attestation clause, seemingly cut from Whitaker's Almanac: – "Signed by the testator (or testatrix as the case may be) in the presence of us, both present at the same time," etc.
"She's got that right, anyhow," he murmured.
Then, walking along, he read the will of Auntie Hamps. It was quickly spotted with raindrops.
At the house the blinds were drawn up, and the women sedately cheerful. Maggie was actually teasing Bert about his new hat, and young Clara, active among the preparations for tea for six, was intensely and seriously proud at being included in the ceremonial party of adults. She did not suspect that the adults themselves had a novel sensation of being genuinely adult, and that the last representative of the older generation was gone, and that this common sensation drew them together rather wistfully.
"Oh! By the way, there's a telegram for you," said Maggie, as Minnie left the dining-room after serving the last trayful of hot dishes and pots.
