"Yes, sir, yes—I continue pretty well." Again he looked round. "Perhaps you will all sit down."
"I, for one, should be ashamed to sit." The draper spoke with reproach in his voice, for the rest had taken chairs. "Ashamed, sir, while you are standing."
It was something like the old-fashioned reading of the will, but before the funeral instead of after. They sat expectant, hungrily expectant. Out of so many millions, surely, surely something would come to every one! Would it take the form of hundreds?
"Alma," said the pew-opener, coming along in the omnibus, "he's got a good heart; you can see it in his deep blue eye. He's bound to give us what we ask—and Alice my own first cousin and all, and you but one removed."
"Perhaps Cousin Charles has been at him behind our backs."
It is disheartening to observe the readiness with which young ladies on a certain social level ascribe and suspect the baser springs of action.
"Trust him!" The lady of the pews should have learned more Christian charity. "But I hope he won't be able to poison Cousin John's mind against honest people. I call him 'Cousin-John-by-marriage,' not 'Mr. Haveril,' and I say he took us over with Alice when he married her. A man marries, my dear, into his wife's family. Alma!"
"What is it, mother?"
"They've got no children. Somebody must have it when they go. Why not you and me?"
"Why not, mother? We could make a good use of it."