"No, it will not," said Peters.
One day, while Peters was lying under the tree, a party of men came and took measurements, and cut lines in the turf, but they did not attempt to touch the tree. Peters chuckled.
But next morning he was awakened by a sound of sawing. A party of labourers had come early, and were at work on the tree, sawing off the heavy lower boughs. Peters leant half out of the window in his night-shirt and shook his fist at them. He was wild with excitement.
"Leave my tree alone!" he screamed.
The men stopped work for a minute. Two of them laughed. One of them shouted up to him:
"Hold your row, you old fool! It ain't your tree."
"It is mine," cried Peters. "I shall come down to you and stop you. I'm coming now." Then he fell back on the bed fainting.
Mrs Marks was much alarmed, and—whether Peters liked it or not—insisted on having a doctor.
When the doctor came downstairs she met him in the passage. "Well, sir?" she said.
"I can do nothing—might have done if I'd been called in years ago. It's the heart. He can't last long. Don't let him be excited, and I'll send you something to give him for these fainting attacks."