We and the World, Part I | Page 9

the reddest.
My father wanted us to go home before the reading of the will, which
took place in the front parlour; but the lawyer said, "I think the young
gentlemen should remain," for which we were very much obliged to
him; though the pale-faced man said quite crossly--"Is there any special
reason for crowding the room with children, who are not even relatives

of the deceased?" which made us feel so much ashamed that I think we
should have slipped out by ourselves; but the lawyer, who made no
answer, pushed us gently before him to the top of the room, which was
soon far too full to get out of by the door.
It was very damp and musty. In several places the paper hung in great
strips from the walls, and the oddest part of all was that every article of
furniture in the room, and even the hearthrug, was covered with sheets
of newspaper pinned over to preserve it. I sat in the corner of a sofa,
where I could read the trial of a man who murdered somebody
twenty-five years before, but I never got to the end of it, for it went on
behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all the
time and hid it. Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with his
head on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names
were read out in the will. Even then he only half awoke, and the fat
man drove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in
Jem's ear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having
saved the life of his cat.
I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections of the
old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; and the
lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times over that
we really had been invited to the funeral. After our legacies were
known about they were so cross that we managed to scramble through
the window, and wandered round the garden. As we sat under the trees
we could hear high words within, and by and by all the men came out
and talked in angry groups about the will. For when all was said and
done, it appeared that the old miser had not left a penny to any one of
the funeral party but Jem and me, and that he had left Walnut-tree Farm
to a certain Mrs. Wood, of whom nobody knew anything.
"The wording is so peculiar," the fat man said to the pale-faced man
and a third who had come out with them; "'left to her as a sign of
sympathy, if not an act of reparation.' He must have known whether he
owed her any reparation or not, if he were in his senses."
"Exactly. If he were in his senses," said the third man.

"Where's the money?--that's what I say," said the pale-faced man.
"Exactly, sir. That's what I say, too," said the fat man.
"There are only two fields, besides the house," said the third. "He must
have had money, and the lawyer knows of no investments of any kind,
he says."
"Perhaps he has left it to his cat," he added, looking very nastily at Jem
and me.
"It's oddly put, too," murmured the pale-faced relation. "The two fields,
the house and furniture, and everything of every sort therein
contained." And the lawyer coming up at that moment, he went slowly
back into the house, looking about him as he went, as if he had lost
something.
As the lawyer approached, the fat man got very red in the face.
"He was as mad as a hatter, sir," he said, "and we shall dispute the
will."
"I think you will be wrong," said the lawyer, blandly. "He was
eccentric, my dear sir, very eccentric; but eccentricity is not insanity,
and you will find that the will will stand."
Jem and I were sitting on an old garden-seat, but the men had talked
without paying any attention to us. At this moment Jem, who had left
me a minute or two before, came running back and said: "Jack! Do
come and look in at the parlour window. That man with the white face
is peeping everywhere, and under all the newspapers, and he's made
himself so dusty! It's such fun!"
Too happy at the prospect of anything in the shape of fun, I followed
Jem on tiptoe, and when we stood by the open window with our hands
over our mouths to keep us from laughing, the pale-faced man was just
struggling with the inside lids of an old