The distant honking of a motor caused her to turn away quickly. Amidon had settled himself halfway down the bank and she called to him and began the descent....
If Jerry had expressed his feelings he would have said that Copeland’s appearance had given him a hard jar. It was annoying, just when you have reached the highest aim of your life, to have your feet knocked from under you. To have your boss spoil your afternoon with the prettiest girl in town was not only disagreeable, but it roused countless apprehensions.
For the afternoon was spoiled. Nan’s efforts to act as though nothing had happened were badly simulated, and finding that she lapsed frequently into long reveries, Jerry paddled doggedly back to the clubhouse.
CHAPTER XII
LAST WILLS AND TESTAMENTS
From the beginning of his infirmities Farley’s experiments in will-writing had taxed the patience of Thurston, his lawyer. Within two years he had made a dozen wills, and he kept them for comparison in a secret drawer of Mrs. Farley’s old sewing-table in his room. He penciled cryptic marks on the various envelopes for ease of identification, and he was influenced often by the most trivial circumstances in his revisions. If Nan irritated him, he cut down her legacy; when things went happily, he increased it. He was importuned to make bequests to great numbers of institutions, by men and women he knew well, and his attitude toward these changed frequently. There was hardly a phase of the laws of descent that Thurston had not explained to him.
A few days after her river excursion, the colored man-of-all-work handed Nan an envelope that had dropped from Farley’s dressing-gown as it hung on a clothes-line in the backyard for its periodical sunning. The envelope was unsealed. In the upper left-hand corner was the name and address of Thurston and in the center were four small crosses in pencil. Nan thrust it into a bureau drawer, intending to restore it to the dressing-gown pocket when she could do so without attracting Farley’s attention.
Her eyes fell upon it that night as she was preparing for bed. She laid it on her dressing-table and studied the queer little crosses as she brushed her hair.
Copeland had complained of Farley’s hardness, and if Billy had told the truth about the plight to which he had been reduced by Farley’s refusal to renew the last notes for the purchase money, the complaint was just. She crouched on a low stool before the table and gazed into the reflection of her eyes.
She played idly with the envelope, resisting an impulse to open it for a glance at the paper that crinkled in her fingers. She had been very “good” lately, and to pry into affairs that Farley had sedulously kept from her was repugnant to her better nature.... Farley’s abuse of her on the day of the luncheon, and his rage over her payment of the thousand dollars for the defense of her brother came back to her vividly. He had threatened to make it impossible for Billy to profit by marrying her.... She had a right to know what provision Farley meant to make for her. If in the end he intended to throw her upon her own resources or to provide for her in ways that curtailed her liberty, there was every reason why she should prepare to meet the situation.
The paper slipped from the envelope and she pressed it open.