“Something like that,” he laughed. “Anyway, here I am; and I’ve come to you to ask what I’m to do next. I’ve just had a talk with Dolly.”
Mrs. Darling threw up her hands, and therewith she set about his cross-examination, asking him a number of questions in regard to his life, and receiving a number of evasive replies. “My good man,” she said at length, “do you realize that Dolly is an established widow, on the look out, in fact, for another husband? Do you realize that we’ve had a solemn memorial service for you, and put a tablet up in the church?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” he answered. “It made me blush for shame.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” she said. “You may well be ashamed that you have fallen so far short of the virtues attributed to you. I always think it is such a wonderful thing in nature that the only creatures who can blush are the only creatures who have occasion to.”
Considering that it was her daughter’s future which was at stake, Mrs. Darling seemed to Jim to be treating matters very lightly.
“Do you realize,” she went on, her voice rising, “that your will has been read, and Dolly owns every penny you had, and gives me three hundred pounds a year allowance?”
“Only three hundred?” he remarked. “That’s mean. I’ll give you four.”
“It’s not yours to give,” she answered. “You’re dead—dead as mutton. You can’t play fast and loose with death like that, you know. When you’re murdered, you’re murdered, and there’s an end of it. It would make things absolutely impossible if people could go popping in and out of their graves like you are doing. Surely you can see that. What did Dolly say?”
“Oh, she was very upset,” he told her. “She stormed at me and called me every name under the sun; said she had always hated me; told me she was going to marry George Merrivall.”
“Well, what else did you expect? She says you ill-treated her horribly.”