and watches its own powers with interest. Mary had plenty of merriment within.
Her thought was not veined by any solemnity or pathos about the old man on the bed: such sentiments are easier to affect than to feel about an aged creature whose life is not visibly anything but a remnant of vices. She had always seen the most disagreeable side of Mr Featherstone: he was not proud of her, and she was only useful to him. To be anxious about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left to the saints of the earth; and Mary was not one of them. She had never returned him a harsh word, and had waited on him faithfully: that was her utmost. Old Featherstone himself was not in the least anxious about his soul, and had declined to see Mr Tucker on the subject.
To-night he had not once snapped, and for the first hour or two he lay remarkably still, until at last Mary heard him rattling his bunch of keys against the tin box which he always kept in the bed beside him. About three o’clock he said, with remarkable distinctness, “Missy, come here!”
Mary obeyed and found that he had already drawn the tin box from under the clothes, though he usually asked to have this done for him; and he had selected the key. He now unlocked the box, and, drawing from it another key, looked straight at her with eyes that seemed to have recovered all their sharpness and said, “How many of ’em are in the house?”
“You mean of your own relations, sir,” said Mary, well used to the old man’s way of speech. He nodded slightly and she went on.
“Mr Jonah Featherstone and young Cranch are sleeping here.”
“Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the rest—they come every day, I’ll warrant—Solomon and Jane, and all the young uns? They come peeping, and counting and casting up?”
“Not all of them every day. Mr Solomon and Mrs Waule are here every day, and the others come often.”
The old man listened with a grimace while she spoke, and then said, relaxing his face, “The more fools they. You hearken, Missy. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’ve got all my faculties as well as ever I had in my life. I know all my property, and where the money’s put out, and everything. And I’ve made everything ready to change my mind, and do as I like at the last. Do you hear, Missy? I've got my faculties.”
“Well, sir?” said Mary, quietly.
He now lowered his tone with an air of deeper cunning. “I’ve made two wills, and I'm going to burn one. Now you do as I tell you. This is the key of my iron chest, in the closet there. You push well at the side of the brass plate at the top, till it goes like a bolt: then you can put the key in the front lock and turn it. See and do that; and take out the topmost paper—Last Will and Testament—big printed.”
