“A sharp stroke. A clever fellow, Stephen. You always were a fool.”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” he said quietly.
“But Stephen is a knave, and a fool, too,” murmured the old man. “Jack, I wish—I wish I could come back to the funeral.”
“To see his face when the will’s read,” explained old Ralph, with a grim smile.
Jack colored, and, I am ashamed to say, grinned.
A sardonic smile flitted over the old man’s face.
“Be sure you are there, Jack; don’t let him keep you away.”
“Not that you will be disappointed—much,” said the old man.
“Don’t think of me, sir,” said Jack, with a dim sense of the discordance in such talk from such lips.
“I have thought of you as far—as—as I dared. Jack, you are an honest fool. Why—why did you give that post obit?”