“He’s left nobody no money but Mrs. Watson and you.”
“If ’tis five pound, ’tis welcome to-day; an’ if ’tis five shillin’, I’ll thank un an’ spend it ’pon a ring to wear for un. He was a gude auld blid, an’ I’m sorry he’s gone.”
“Will, Uncle’s left ’e a thousand pound!”
“What! You’m jokin’.”
“Solemn truth. ’Tis in mother’s letter.”
A rush of joy lighted up the young man’s face. He said not a word; then his eyes grew moist.
“To think as he could have loved a daft fule like me so well as that! Me—that never done nothin’—no, not so much as to catch a dish of trout for un, now an’ again, when he was here.”
“You couldn’t, bein’ water-keeper.”
“What matter for that? I ought to have poached for un, seein’ the manner of man he was.”
He kept silence for a while, then burst out—