to me,” said Solomon, not advancing, however. “I could sit up with you to-night, and Jane with me, willingly, and you might take your own time to speak, or let me speak.”
“Yes, I shall take my own time—you needn’t offer me yours,” said Peter.
“But you can't take your own time to die in, Brother,” began Mrs Waule, with her usual woolly tone. “And when you lie speechless you may be tired of having strangers about you, and you may think of me and my children” but here her voice broke under the touching thought which she was attributing to her speechless brother; the mention of ourselves being naturally affecting.
“No, I shan’t,” said old Featherstone, contradictiously. “I shan’t think of any of you. I've made my will, I tell you, I've made my will.” Here he turned his head towards Mrs Vincy, and swallowed some more of his cordial.
“Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to others,” said Mrs Waule, turning her narrow eyes in the same direction.
“Oh, sister,” said Solomon, with ironical softness, “you and me are not fine, and handsome, and clever enough: we must be humble and let smart people push themselves before us.”
Fred’s spirit could not bear this: rising and looking at Mr Featherstone, he said, “Shall my mother and I leave the room, sir, that you may be alone with your friends?”
“Sit down, I tell you,” said old Featherstone, snappishly. “Stop where you are. Good-bye, Solomon,” he added, trying to wield his stick again, but failing now that he had reversed the handle. “Good-bye, Mrs Waule. Don’t you come again.”
“I shall be down-stairs, Brother, whether or no,” said Solomon. “I shall do my duty, and it remains to be seen what the Almighty will allow.”
“Yes, in property going out of families,” said Mrs Waule, in continuation,—“and where there’s steady young men to carry on. But I pity them who are not such, and I pity their mothers. Good-bye, Brother Peter.”
“Remember, I’m the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the first, just as you did, and have got land already by the name of Featherstone,” said Solomon, relying much on that reflection, as one which might be suggested in the watches of the night. “But I bid you good-bye for the present.”
Their exit was hastened by their seeing old Mr Featherstone pull his wig on each side and shut his eyes with his mouth-widening grimace, as if he were determined to be deaf and blind.
None the less they came to Stone Court daily and sat below at the post of duty, sometimes carrying on a slow dialogue in an undertone in which the observation and response were so far apart, that any one hearing them might have imagined himself listening to speaking automata, in some doubt whether the ingenious mechanism would really
