Well, it was shivery, as we rolled along in the creaky old mourning-coach, behind the hearse: Mr. Coney and the Podds’ lawyer-cousin from Birmingham on one side; I and Cole, the doctor, opposite. The sleet pattered against the windows, the wind whistled in our ears. The lawyer kept saying “eugh,” and shaking his shoulders, telling us he had a cold in his head; and looked just as stern as he had at the wedding.
All was soon over: Herbert Tanerton did not read slowly to-day: and we got back to Maythorn Bank. Cole had left us: he stopped the coach en route, and cut across a field to see a patient: but Mr. Coney drew me into the house with him after the lawyer.
“We will go in, Johnny,” he whispered. “The poor girl has no relation or friend to back her up, and I shall stay with her while the will’s read.”
Mrs. Lewis, in a new widow’s cap as big as a house, and the two girls in shining jet chains, were sitting in state. Anne came in the next minute, her face pale, her eyes red. We all sat down; and for a short time looked at one another in silence, like so many mutes.
“Any will to be read? I am told there is one,” spoke the lawyer—who had, as Fanny Podd whispered to me, a wife at home as sour as himself. “If so, it had better be produced: I have to catch a train.”
“Yes, there is a will,” answered old Coney, glad to find that Anne, as he assumed, had mentioned the fact. “Miss Lewis holds the will. Will you get it, my dear?”
Anne unlocked the desk on the side-table, and put the will into Mr. Coney’s hand. Without saying with your leave or by your leave, he broke the seals, and clapped on his spectacles.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Lewis asked old Coney, from her seat on the sofa.
“Dr. Lewis’s will, ma’am. Made in France, I believe: was it not, Miss Anne?”
“My dear, sweet creature, it is so much waste paper,” spoke Mrs. Lewis, smiling sweetly upon Anne. “My deeply lamented husband’s last will and testament was made long since he left France.”