"Yes, Aunt Maggie."
"I'm ashamed of you, Mordecai Barnes," said she; "ashamed of you. It served you right. You got just what was comin' to you. I wish William had banged you worse."
Mordecai Barnes groaned.
"And more than that," continued Aunt Maggie, glaring at him through her spectacles, "I've torn up my old will which named you my sole heir and made a new one and left all my property to this yer very hospital."
With these words Aunt Maggie walked away and left the room.
Mordecai Barnes could not speak for a few minutes. He looked as if death would be welcome. Then, pulling the bedclothes up under his chin and closing his eyes wearily, he said:
"Curse the day, say I, when George Watkins first went to the Huxley Institute and heard about frictional electricity."