“What, what has happened this time?” enquired Belle, with bright excited eyes.
“The Major is dead.”
“Dead!” echoed Mrs. Redmond. “Nonsense!”
“Yes, went off in an apoplexy, or a stroke. Mrs. Malone looked into the study an hour after lunch (indeed it was about Jane Bolland’s bill), and you know he was always a heavy eater. She saw him lying face downwards on the table, with a telegram in his hand. She screamed to Jane, and between them they lifted him up, and he was dead, stone dead, with the red cat sitting beside him. Mrs. Malone has been from one faint into another ever since, and I just ran over to tell you,” and she gasped for breath.
After this announcement there was a profound silence for some seconds, and then Betty said:
“How dreadful! How sudden! Why I was speaking to him this morning as he drove past the gate.”
“Well, you will never speak to him again,” returned Maria, emphatically.
“Poor Mrs. Malone,” continued Betty. “Who is with her and Cuckoo?”
“No one, so I just come to fetch you, Betty; you know the ways of the house; they are used to you, and there must be some one to keep things together. They say Mrs. Malone is in for some illness from the shock, and you know what Cuckoo is. She has been screeching and crying ever since it was found, at three o’clock.”
Yes, the big, burly, loud-voiced Major that had driven past the gate flourishing his whip a few hours ago was now merely “it,” and had been laid out on the study sofa, awaiting the county coroner.