“That would suit me just as well,” said Stella. “I don't want his filthy two thousand, and I wouldn't touch it if I were starving!”
Agues Crewe, who had come down with her husband to hear the Will read, said:. “I didn't expect uncle to remember me in his Will, but I must admit that it does upset me to think that Baby is not even mentioned. After all, the mite is the only representative of the third generation, and I do think uncle might have left him something, even if it were only quite a little thing.”
Owen Crewe, a quiet man in the late thirties, said pleasantly: “No doubt he felt that my son was hardly a member of the Matthews family, my dear.”
Agnes, as fair-minded as her mother, and with her sister's invincible good-nature, replied: “Well, there is that, of course, but after all, I'm a Matthews, and—”
“On the contrary, my dear,” said Owen, “you were a Lupton before you married me.”
Agnes gave her jolly laugh. “Oh, you men! You always have an answer to everything. Well, there's no use crying over spilt milk, and I shan't say another word about it.”
“That is an excellent resolve, my dear, and one that I hope you won't break more than three times a day,” replied Owen gravely.
Henry Lupton, who had made no contribution to the conversation till now, suddenly said with a deprecating little laugh: “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing.”
“You may consider yourself blessed if you choose,” said his wife severely. “I am far from looking at it in that light. Gregory was a thoroughly selfish man, though I am sorry to have to say such a thing of my own brother, and when I think that but for me he would be buried by now, and no one a penny the wiser as to the cause of his death I am extremely sorry that I did not wash my hands of the whole affair.”
“No, no!” remonstrated Randall. “Think of the coals of fire you are heaping on his ghostly head!”