After exaggerating her report, Annie said: "You are going now, then."
Jane fach took from a chair a cup that had tea in it, a candlestick—the candle in which died before Jacob—and a teapot, and she sat in the chair. "Oo-oo," she squeaked. "Sorry am I you are flown."
"Stupid wenches you are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious. Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead."
Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak of a parrot, put forth her head. "The reins of a flaming chariot can't drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he promised."
"Great is your avarice," Simon declared.
"Fonder he was of me than any one," Annie cried. "The birthdays he presented me with dresses—until he was sacked. While I was cribbing, did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day."
"I was his chief friend," said Simon. "We were closer than brothers. So grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a funeral sermon on my brother Shacob."
Jacob's virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly. Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed cake to the little children of the capel.
Wheedlers flattered him for gain: "The watch of a nobleman you carry" and "The ring would buy a field," said those about Sion; "Never seen a more exact fact simily of King George in my life than you," cried spongers in London public-houses. All grasped whatever gifts they could and turned from him laughing: "The watch of the fob is brass"; "No more worth than a play marble is the ring"; "Old Griffiths is the bloomin' limit." Yet Jacob had delight in the thought that folk passed him rich for his apparel and acts.
"Waste of hours very awful is this," Simon uttered by and by. He brought out his order book and a blacklead pencil. "Take stock will I now and put down."