Seeing how much we were all in need of a glass of wine, Dirdumwhamle, with that free thought which forms so prominent a feature of his character, suggested to his lady that she should order in the decanters, and, with a bit of the shortbread, enable us to fortify our hearts for the doleful task and duty we had yet to perform.
The decanters were, accordingly, ordered in; the wine poured into the glasses; and all present to each other sighed, as in silence, the reciprocity of good wishes.
After which a pause ensued—a very syncope of sadness—a dwam of woe, as the Leddy herself would have called it, had she been spared, to witness how much we all felt.—But she was gone—she had paid the debt of nature, and done, as Dirdumwhamle said, what we are all in this life ordained to do. It is, therefore, of no consequence to imagine how she could either have acted or felt had she been present at the reading of her last will and testament. In a word, after that hiatus in the essay of mourning, it was proposed, by young Milrookit, that the Leddy’s scrutoire should be opened, and the contents thereof examined.
No objection was made on the part of any of the sorrowful and assembled friends,—quite the contrary. They all evinced the most natural solicitude, that everything proper and lawful should be done. ‘It is but showing our respect to the memory of her that is gone,’ said Dirdumwhamle, ‘to see in what situation she has left her affairs—not that I have any particular interest in the business, but only, considering the near connection between her and my family, it is due to all the relations that the distribution which she has made of her property should be published among them.—It would have been a happy and a comfortable thing to every one who knew her worth had her days been prolonged; but, alas! that was not in her own power. Her time o’ this world was brought, by course of nature, to an end, and no man ought to gainsay the ordinances of Providence.—Gudewife, hae ye the key o’ the desk-head?’
Mrs. Milrookit, his wife, who, during this highly sympathetic conversation, had kept her handkerchief to her eyes, without removing it, put her hand into her pocket, and, bringing forth a bunch of keys, looked for one aside, which, having found, she presented it to her husband, saying, with a sigh, ‘That’s it.’
He took it in his hand, and, approaching the scrutoire, found, to his surprise, that it was sealed.
‘How is this?’ cried Dirdumwhamle, in an accent somewhat discordant with the key in which the performers to the concert of woe were attuned.
‘I thought,’ replied Walkinshaw the Laird, ‘that it was but regular, when my grandmother died, that, until we all met, as we are now met, her desk and drawers should be sealed for fear——’
‘For fear of what?’ Dirdumwhamle was on the point of saying as we thought; but, suddenly checking himself, and, again striking the note of woe, in perfect harmony, he replied,—
‘Perfectly right, Laird,—when all things are done in order, no one can have any reason to complain.’