"Say, Alf," he began, as he ascended the steps to the porch, "if it's agreeable to you, I'd like to have a dollar for pocket-change. Het's pretty liberal, as a general thing, but Ned says she's powerful upset over her loss, an' I'd sorter hate to tackle 'er the fust day we are over thar, an' I know, in reason, I'll need a few nickels to drop here an' thar."
"Get it for him, Jim," Henley ordered, and, while Cahews was at the cash-drawer, Wrinkle went round the counter and took a plug of tobacco from a box.
"I'd take along a few sticks o' peppermint, too," he said, as he wistfully surveyed the candy-jars, "but I've got so I can't suck a stick without toothache. Ain't a bit o' fun treatin' yore stomach if you have to abuse yore gums while you are at it. Well, so long, boys," he said, after he had carefully counted the coins Cahews had put into his hand and was descending the steps. "Folks says that partin' is always harder on the ones that are left behind, an' I reckon it's so in this case, for it's dull enough here, an' I intend to have a good time. The funeral, and paying due respect to the dead, will occupy me to-day and to-morrow, an' after that I want to take a fish in Ben's brag pond. They say he's got—or did have when he was alive—government trout two foot long, an' oodlin's of 'em, hungry enough to bite anything you stick on yore hook."
If the news of the wealthy planter's death and the departure of the Wrinkles under the high honor which had been conferred upon the unpretentious pair furnished food for gossip at Chester, what may be said of the later report which at first crawled from the bereaved mansion, and then, taking on speed, ran hurtling like wildfire over the country?
Ben Warren, sick unto death, and yet in full possession of his senses, for valid reasons of his own had cut off many anxious more distant relatives and bequeathed all his real estate and personal property to his loving and faithful niece, "Hester Wrinkle Henley."
Henley himself was disposed to regard the report as a false one, a canard set afloat by the irrepressible Wrinkle, who would joke as readily about the dead as the living. But even the shrewd business man himself was convinced one morning by the appearance of Wrinkle, who had dismounted from a fine horse at the hitching-post and came in lashing the legs of his baggy trousers with a riding-whip.
"I reckon you've heard what's happened, Alf," he began, in a tone in which there was no guile. "It never rains but it pours cats and pitchforks. I'm out o' breath. Forty-six men, women, an' babies met me as I rid in all as eager to know the facts as if they had the'r names in the pot, an' I had to go over the tale so many times that my hoss got so he would nod or shake his head exactly right whenever a question was axed. Them that hate Het would turn white at the gills an' groan, an' the rest would say, 'Oh, my!' an' set in to do it on the spot."
"Yes, we heard the report," Henley made answer, "but we didn't know whether to believe it or not. I reckon you got it plumb straight?"
"Straight as a shingle," Wrinkle said, sincerely. "Het not only told me, but so did the lawyer, a big-bellied chap from Atlanta, in broadcloth and headlight buttons in his shirt. Huh! I reckon you think you know Het purty well, Alf; but you don't. I don't, an' my wife don't. I reckon her Maker sometimes wonders what she'll do in a pinch. I 'lowed she was one woman that 'u'd like to fall heir to a pile o' cash, but they say when Ben sent for her to come to his bed whar the lawyer was ready with pen and ink and paper, an' Ben told her he was goin' to put her in entire charge of his effects, lock, stock, an' barrel—they say when she heard that she begun to wail an' take on at such a rate that they couldn't git her to talk business at all. They had to rub 'er down an' bathe 'er feet in hot mustard-water, an' it was all they could do to keep 'er from crossin' over, hand in hand, with Ben, an' leavin' the boodle to anybody that 'u'd pick it up. The Lord only knows who would have got the swag in that case, but comin' into a fortune don't kill often, an' Het will manage somehow. She et a square meal this mornin' 'fore I started, pokin' it up under her veil-like, in purty good chunks, an' give orders to the niggers like a captain on a ship ridin' high waves. Thar always was only one thing in this life that pestered that woman, an' that was responsibility to the dead. I reckon she thinks the livin' can tote the'r own loads. Be that as it may, she's goin' to see that Ben's shebang an' all pertainin' to it is run jest to a gnat's heel like he would run it if he was alive. But comin' down to brass tacks, she owes her good luck to exactly what most folks thought was a weak p'int in 'er. They say Ben was so all-fired mad at the gal that kicked 'im to death that he said all women was unfaithful, an' he picked Het out for reward because she had showed she was one amongst a million. Then, too, Het kept tellin' 'im he was good for another forty years, while the rest of his kin was sayin' to his teeth that they was sorry he had to go an hopin' that he had his papers in order. If I could get head or tail of the mystery of life, I might be able to tell whether Het was actin' a part or not. I think she simply done it so well that she believed it; anyways, Ben liked it, an' spent his last hours an' every cent he had tryin' to pacify her."
"And he was rich?" Cahews thrust in, tentatively.