“Berry well, now look him t’rough,” said the black, peeping over the housekeeper’s shoulder, as he held a long lank candle of yellow tallow, in such a manner as to throw its feeble light on the volume.
“Yes, but I must begin with the very beginning of the book,” replied the other, turning the leaves carefully back, until, moving two at once, she lighted upon a page covered with writing. “Here,” said the housekeeper, shaking with the eagerness of expectation, “here are the very words themselves; now I would give the world itself to know whom he has left the big silver shoe buckles to.”
“Read ’em,” said Caesar, laconically.
“And the black walnut drawers; for Harvey could never want furniture of that quality, as long as he is a bachelor!”
“Why he no want ’em as well as he fader?”
“And the six silver tablespoons; Harvey always uses the iron!”
“P’r’ap he say, without so much talk,” returned the sententious black, pointing one of his crooked and dingy fingers at the open volume.
Thus repeatedly advised, and impelled by her own curiosity, Katy began to read. Anxious to come to the part which most interested herself, she dipped at once into the center of the subject.
“Chester Birch, born September 1st, 1755,”—read the spinster, with a deliberation that did no great honor to her scholarship.
“Well, what he gib him?”