"You--you----! You----! It's a fraud! a----fraud! It's a swindle! Don't you flatter yourself that it will stand! Don't you think I'll let it stand! Wait till Twelves comes, then I'll show you!"
"Wait till Dr. Twelves comes? Suppose he never comes?"
"What do you mean? What are you doing with that pillow?"
"Suppose Dr. Twelves never comes, what is to prevent this will from standing?"
"What are you doing with that pillow, you----!"
"I'm going to stop your saying such dreadful things. It pains me to have to listen to such language."
She snatched away one pillow from beneath his head, and then a second. She had propped him in such a way that when he was deprived of their support his head fell back, and there recurred the scene of the previous afternoon. He began to choke; his unwieldy frame was shaken by convulsive efforts to breathe; stertorous gasps proceeded from the region of his chest. He presented a dreadful spectacle.
The sight did not seem to in any way affect the woman who was standing by his bed, with the pillows still in her hand. She pressed the bolster farther up his back so that his head declined at an acute angle; applying her palm to the point of his chin she forced it lower still. Then she said--
"I'll place the will as you wished me, Mr. Grahame, under your pillow".
She placed it there, under the single pillow which remained; then she left the room.