“Peters goes out of this house when Miss Bird goes,” cried Mrs. Blight, sinking into a chair and puffing heavily. “Charles, I believe I shall take the old lady’s room for mine, and save coming up stairs. It will be so convenient. And you must run out a new dressing-room and bath-room; those down stairs don’t suit me at all. Aunt Wroat’s personal tastes were so horrid plain. I shall clean out all the present servants. I know that Toppen hates us both, but he was forced to be civil to the heir, you know. And, by the way, we must have mourning clothes, Charles. You must write to your tailor to send a man to take your measure immediately, and I will drop a note to Jay’s, and have them send a complete mourning outfit and a dressmaker to me.”
The notes were written in Mr. Blight’s most grandiloquent style, and although they were brief, they betrayed the complacency of a satisfied heir in every line.
The tailor and dressmaker arrived in due time, and Mrs. Blight discussed ribbons and shades of silk, and the respective merits of French and English crape up stairs, while the old lady was being robed for the grave below, and Lally lay upon her own bed, weeping as though her heart were breaking.
Lally kept to her own room until after the funeral. She could not eat nor sleep. Etiquette forbade her attending her deceased relative to the grave, but she watched the departure of the funeral train from her window, her eyes almost blinded with her tears.
After the funeral, Mr. Blight and Mr. Harris the lawyer returned to the mansion in Mount street, and the latter summoned Mrs. Blight, Lally and Peters, to hear the will read.
Mrs. Blight swept in, clad in the deepest mourning, her garments covered deep with crape, a black-bordered handkerchief held at her eyes. Mr. Blight placed an armed chair for her near the hearth, the October day being chilly, and took a seat at her side with quite an air of proprietorship of the house.
Lally, in deep mourning, came next, with the faithful Peters, also in mourning habiliments. Mr. Harris placed a chair for Lally, and Peters sat near her young mistress, to whose service she intended to devote herself.
Mr. Harris then, with preparatory clearings of his throat, read the will. It commenced by declaring the testator of sound mind, being the usual formula, and proceeded with an enumeration of property at which the Blights grew inwardly radiant.
“All this, my real and personal property,” read Mr. Harris, in effect, “I give and bequeath, absolutely and without reserve, to—my beloved great-niece, Lally Bird, the daughter of John Bird and Clara Mulford Percy his wife, to her and to her heirs and assigns forever.”
The Blights gasped for breath.