VII.
Nan May rose another woman in the morning; for there was work before her. The children marvelled to see her so calm and so busy, so full of thought for the business in hand, so little occupied with sorrowful remembrance. The old man, prudent ever, had arranged years since for what had now befallen. There was a simple little will on a sheet of notepaper. There was a great and complicated list, on odd scraps of paper, thickly beset with additions, alterations, and crossings-out, of the “specimens” hoarded in the cottage; with pencil notes of values, each revised a dozen times, as the market changed. There was a Post-Office Savings Bank deposit book, with entries amounting to eight pounds ten, and a nomination form whereby Nan May might withdraw the money. There was no life-insurance, for the old man had surrendered it years ago, to secure the few pounds he needed to make up the full price of the cottage.
The will gave Nan May all there might be to take, and left her to execute. Uncle Isaac, on the return to the cottage the day before, had at length broken into speech, and by devious approaches, cunningly disguised and ostentatiously casual, had reached the will. But he got little by his motion, for though his niece told him the will’s purport, she protested that till to-morrow she should do nothing with it, nor did she even offer to produce it. Of course, he had scarcely expected a legacy himself; but still, he was Uncle Isaac, profound in experience, learned in the law, and an oracle in the family. It seemed, to say the least, a little scandalous that he should not have had the handling of this property, the selling, the control, the doling out, with such consideration the exertion might earn, and the accidents of arithmetic detach.
“It’s an important thing, is a will,” said Uncle Isaac sagely. “A thing as ought to be seen to by a experienced person. You might jist look an’ see ’ow it’s wrote. If any’s wrote in pencil it’s nullavoid.”
“No,” replied Mrs. May, without moving. “It’s all in ink.”
Then, after a long pause: “Lawyers comes very expensive with wills,” Uncle Isaac observed. “They come expensive alwis, an’ mostly they rob the property accordin’ to form o’ lawr. It’s best to get a man of experience, as you can trust, to go straight to Somerset ’ouse in form o’ porpus . . . It’s the cheapest way, an’ safe. ’E takes the will, jist as it might be me, an’ ’e goes to the ’thorities, an’ ’e talks to ’em, knowin’ an’ confidential. ’Ere I am, ses ’e, as it might be me, on be’alf o’ the last will an’ ’oly testament as it might be o’ Mr. May. An’ I’ve come in form o’ porpus, ’avin’ objections to lawyers. In form o’ porpus,” Uncle Isaac repeated impressively, tapping a forefinger on the table: as was his way of blazoning an erudite phrase that else might pass unregarded.
“Poor gran’dad told me what to do about goin’ to Somerset House, an’ all that,” answered Nan May, “in case anything happened. But I’d take it very kind if you’d come with me, Uncle Isaac, me not understandin’ such things. But I can’t think about it to-day.” And with so much of his finger in the pie Uncle Isaac was fain to be content. And soon he left, declining to stay for the night—to Johnny’s great relief—because his cheap return-ticket was available for the day and no more.
And now Johnny, having brought sheets of foolscap paper from Loughton, was set to work to make a fair copy of the amazing list of specimens; a work at great length accomplished in an unstable round hand, but on the whole with not so many blots. And Nan May’s series of visits to Somerset House was begun, saddening her with a cost of one and ninepence each visit for fares in train and omnibus. The first, indeed, cost more, for Uncle Isaac’s fare from Millwall was also to be paid. But he came no more, for in truth his failure as a man of business was instant and ignoble.
To begin with, the shadow of the awful building fell on him as he neared it, extinguishing his confidence and stopping his tongue. In the quadrangle the very tall hat distinguished an Uncle Isaac of hushed speech and meek docility, and along the corridors it followed Nan May deferentially, in unresting pursuit of room No. 37. The room was reached at last, and here Uncle Isaac found himself constrained to open the business. For Nan May herself held back now, and the young man in gold-rimmed glasses fixed him with his eye. So, taking off his hat with both hands, Uncle Isaac, in a humble murmur, began:—“We’ve—good mornin’, sir—we’ve come as it might be in form o’ porpus—”
“What?”