Page:The Delectable Duchy.djvu/231

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in a single week. When this happened, he sat down with a gigantic sheet of cartridge paper before him and spent a whole year in setting out the elaborated design. By his will he left all his money to pay for the structure: for his father and mother were dead and he had neither wife nor child.

When all was finished he rubbed his hands, packed up his bag and took a third-class ticket down to his native town, to have a contemptuous look at the Jenkins monuments and see how Jenkins _major_ was getting on.

Jenkins _major_ was up in the cemetery, among his fathers. And on top of Jenkins rested a granite cross--sufficiently handsome, to be sure, for a solicitor, but nothing out of the way. "J.P." was carved upon it; though, as Jenkins had an absurdly long Christian name (Marmaduke Augustus St. John), these letters were squeezed a bit in the right arm of the cross. Underneath was engraved--

 "_ERECTED BY HIS DISCONSOLATE
 WIFE AND CHILDREN.
 A Father kind, a Husband dear,
 A faithful Friend, lies buried her