"Ah, poor girl! she's gone to the seaside with Miss Parsh to nurse her sorrow."
"It will soon pass--soon pass," observed the schoolmaster, waving his pipe. "The young don't think much of death. Miss Sophy's rich, too--rich as the Queen of Sheba, and she will marry Mr. Thorold in a few months. Funeral knells will give way to wedding-bells, Mrs. Berry."
"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Berry, feeling she was called upon for an appropriate sentiment; "you may say so, Mr. Stack. Such is life!"
Cicero, munching his bread-and-cheese, felt that his imposing personality was being neglected, and seized upon what he deemed his opportunity.
"If this company will permit," he said, "I propose now to give a recitation apropos of the present melancholy event. Need I say I refer to the lamented death of Mr. Marlow?"
"I'll have no godless mumming here," said Mrs. Timber firmly. "Besides, what do you know about Mr. Marlow?"
Whereupon Cicero lied lustily to impress the bumpkins, basing his fiction upon such facts as his ears had enabled him to come by.
"Marlow!" he wailed, drawing forth his red bandana for effect. "Did I not know him as I know myself? Were we not boys together till he went to Africa?"
"Perhaps you can tell us about Mr. Marlow," said the schoolmaster eagerly. "None of us knows exactly who he was. He appeared here with his daughter some five years ago, and took the Moat House. He was rich, and people said he had made his riches in South Africa."
"He did! he did!" said Cicero, deeply affected. "Millions he was worth--millions! I came hither to see him, and I arrive to find the fond friend of my youth dead. Oh, Jonathan, my brother Jonathan!"