“Shut up!” said Cocky feebly but viciously. “You parsons are just like ravens, always comin’ and cawin’ where anybody’s bein’ snuffed out; birds of ill-omen, you are—marryin’ and buryin’—he, he!”
The scared vicar looked aghast at the polished London physician. “The mind wanders: the end is near,” murmured that bland person, with a professional sigh.
Mr. Curton shook his head as he folded up the document. It was all very painful to the excellent lawyer; it destroyed all his theories of the nobility; and to make a ducal will in a hurry seemed to him almost like leze-majesty.
“Oh, my dear sir,” he murmured, in sad and useless regret, “why, oh, why leave such a document as this to such a moment?”
“Always thought the pater’d outlive me,” murmured Cocky; “so he would—twenty years—if that byke hadn’t upset him.”
Mouse, sweet, resigned, composed, regretful, came noiselessly into the chamber of death, leading Jack by the hand, very sober and a little frightened, with his beautiful black eyes wide open and fixed in a vague terror on the bed.
“Dear little angel!” murmured the vicar, at whom Jack was wont to aim paper pellets in church.
Mouse approached the bedside. “Beric is here, dear,” she said gently. “He begs to see you. May he come in? Ronald is here, too.”
“Goody-goody and the Miser?” said her husband, in a muffled faint voice. “No; tell ’em both to go to the devil.”
Cocky closed his eyes, and lay to all outward semblance unconscious and indifferent to worldly things; the worn-out lungs drawing in desperately a few last breaths of air. Who shall say what vain regrets for lost opportunities, for wasted talents, for foolish and fruitless hours, were in his thoughts? He looked already dead, save for the slight labored heaving of his chest beneath the bedclothes.