Sing derry down, derry down dale.
Old Mr. Edward Mottisfont looked over the edge of the sheet at David Blake.
“My nephew Edward is most undoubtedly and indisputably a prig—a damned prig,” he added thoughtfully after a moment’s pause for reflection. As he reflected his black eyes danced from David’s face to a crayon drawing which hung on the panelled wall above the mantelpiece.
“His mother’s fault,” he observed, “it’s not so bad in a woman, and she was pretty, which Edward ain’t. Pretty and a prig my sister Sarah——”
There was a faint emphasis on the word sister, and David remembered having heard his mother say that both Edward and William Mottisfont had been in love with the girl whom William married. “And a plain prig my nephew Edward,” continued the old gentleman. “Damn it all, David, why can’t I leave my money to you instead?”
David laughed.
“Because I shouldn’t take it, sir,” he said.
He was sitting, most unprofessionally, on the edge of his patient’s large four-post bed. Old Mr. Edward Mottisfont looked at him quizzically.
“How much would you take—eh, David? Come now—say—how much?”
David laughed again. His grey eyes twinkled. “Nary penny, sir,” he said, swinging his arm over the great carved post beside him. There were cherubs’ heads upon it, a fact that had always amused its owner considerably.