“Not at all, I thank you,” said Wilding. “What was I going to—”
“Don’t excite yourself, Mr. Wilding,” urged the lawyer.
“No; I wasn’t going to,” said the wine-merchant. “Mr. Bintrey and George Vendale, would you have any hesitation or objection to become my joint trustees and executors, or can you at once consent?”
“I consent,” replied George Vendale, readily.
“I consent,” said Bintrey, not so readily.
“Thank you both. Mr. Bintrey, my instructions for my last will and testament are short and plain. Perhaps you will now have the goodness to take them down. I leave the whole of my real and personal estate, without any exception or reservation whatsoever, to you two, my joint trustees and executors, in trust to pay over the whole to the true Walter Wilding, if he shall be found and identified within two years after the day of my death. Failing that, in trust to you two to pay over the whole as a benefaction and legacy to the Foundling Hospital.”
“Those are all your instructions, are they, Mr. Wilding?” demanded Bintrey, after a blank silence, during which nobody had looked at anybody.
“The whole.”
“And as to those instructions, you have absolutely made up your mind, Mr. Wilding?”
“Absolutely, decidedly, finally.”