“Your worthy spouse, madam, died of an arterplax, (apoplexy?) I take it—a-a-hm—well.” The compliment was now revived. “A fat sorrow is better than a lean one—he’s left you well to do in the world, and sich a parsonable woman as you will find enough ready to supply his place.”
The smirk which had been frightened away on his entrance, again returned to adorn his lanthern jaws, giving Madam Fayerweather, in indignant amazement, some reason to imagine he contemplated offering himself as a candidate for the place he alluded to, with small doubts of being a favored one. She rose, and all the Borland blood mounted to her face. The bell-rope was jerked with a violence wholly unnecessary, for Scipio made his appearance before the bell could sound in the kitchen; he and Vi’let having, on Jemmy’s first entrance, stationed themselves in the passage between the parlor and kitchen, and had heard through the keyhole all which had passed. The guest, however, thought good to make a precipitate retreat without waiting for the ceremony of being shown the door. As he passed by the side-gate, Vi’let stood ready to salute him with a ladleful of some liquid, taken from a kettle on the kitchen hearth, which all the plates and dishes, as they had come from the table, had passed through to restore them to their native purity, leaving behind them their impurities floating on the top; and as the rich compound splashed over the skirts of his coat and his silken hose, with gold clocks, she cried after him:
“You want to take Misser Fayerweather’s place, do ye! ye old skinflint—well, see how you like a sup of Vi’let’s broth.”
Stung with his unceremonious dismission; his legs smarting with the scalding liquor, Vi’let’s insult was more than he could bear. Turning round in a rage, he called out, doubling up his fist and shaking it at her—
“Tell your proud jade of a mistress she wont hold her head so high long, on other people’s ground! And as for you! ye nigger”—he made use of an epithet which would not appear polite here—“I’ll have you up to the whipping-post!”
Vi’let answered him with a scornful laugh, as she slammed the gate after him. Poor madam was overwhelmed with mortification and chagrin at her own folly, of which she was fully sensible as soon as she had committed herself.
As Jemmy proceeded home, his keen sense of indignity wore off in the exulting thought of vengeance in full prospect. He and his precious sister, however, had one great drawback to their satisfaction; the necessity of opening their purse-strings sufficiently wide to draw therefrom a fee large enough to induce any man of the law to undertake the case against Mr. Wendell, who was regarded throughout the province as the head of the profession. But a lawyer was at length found at the distance of twenty miles, who was willing to engage in the cause for a moderate share of the profits, if successful, and to lose his fee if not; and the trial was prepared to come on at the annual November court.
It occasioned a great sensation at the bar, from the amount of property involved, and the respective characters of the plaintiffs and defendant; the latter being Mr. Wendell, as executor to the deceased. He determined to plead the cause himself, assisted by a friend as junior counsel. At the first trial, little difficulty was found in having it postponed a year, to give time to hear from Captain Fayerweather; much to the disappointment of the plaintiffs.
The most intense anxiety was now felt by the Fayerweather family, and all connected with it, to hear from George; but as it was known he was to embark from Europe on a voyage of discovery in the South sea, small hopes were entertained of receiving letters from him for many months.
To return to a more pleasing subject—Judith was the darling of all. As her character became more matured with her person, both increased in loveliness, and both received a new charm from the cultivation of her intellect, which proved of no common order. George’s presents to her were chiefly of books; for though his active life prevented him from being a great reader himself, the whole atmosphere in which he had been born and educated, the circle of which he was the pride when at home, being intelligent, he was anxious that deficiency in this point should not be found in Judith. No deficiency of any kind, however, was discovered in her by his family. John regarded her with an affection scarcely less than George’s; and though the idea of supplanting his brother, or of Judith’s ever being more to him than a sister, never crossed his mind, he formed no other attachment.