Mynheer Mopius sat up again, and looked askance at his wife anxiously. “I’m getting better,” he said. “I feel a great deal better to-day.”
“I’m so glad. You look better. And now, Jacóbus, answer my question, on your honor.”
“Harriet, I do believe you want me to die. I don’t think I shall last much longer; still, don’t reckon too much on my speedy demise. I heard the other day of a man who was buried and resuscitated, and lived forty years afterwards.”
“Nonsense,” replied Harriet, unsympathetically. “If you were buried, I should hardly be asking about your will. Now tell me.”
“What if I don’t?”
Harriet shrugged her handsome shoulders. “I suppose the truth is you have left me nothing,” she said, walking away, “and you don’t want to avow your life-long lies. One can never trust your boastings. Perhaps there isn’t so much to leave.”
“You will be a rich woman, Harriet,” answered Mynheer Mopius, solemnly, “a very rich woman. Yes, I have left you all, on condition that you never marry again.”
“A foolish condition,” said Harriet, once more applying the “Report.” “Should the question present itself, I would certainly not be influenced by considerations of that kind.”
“Hum!” said Jacóbus. “Well, now I have told you. So let’s talk of something else. I wish you would give me my jelly.”
She got it for him. “And if I marry, everything goes to Ursula, I suppose,” she persisted. “Well, so much the better for Ursula.”