The lawyer at last appeared, and, directing his clerk to return home with some papers he held in his hand, he begged Mary to get into the gig.
“I must run in to see old Mr Shank first,” she said, “and learn if there is anything aunt or I can do for him.”
“You will find him more easy in his mind than he was when I arrived; but in regard to assistance, he doesn’t require it as much as you suppose. He has consented to let me send a doctor, and a respectable woman to attend on him. He is not in a fit state to be left by himself.”
Mary was surprised at these remarks. Not wishing to delay the lawyer she hurried in. Mr Shank, who was still seated in his arm-chair, put out his shrivelled hand and clasped hers.
“Thank you, Mary, thank you!” he said. “You deserve to be happy, and Heaven will bless your kindness to a forlorn old man. I may live to see you again, but my days are numbered, whatever the lawyer may say to the contrary.”
Mary explained that Mr Thorpe was waiting for her, and saying that she was glad to hear he was to have some one to attend on him, bade him good-bye.
During the drive to Triton Cottage the lawyer did not further allude to Mr Shank, and Mary very naturally forbore to question him.
Aunt Sally, who had become somewhat anxious at her long absence, was greatly surprised at seeing Mr Thorpe, and not being influenced by the same motive as Mary, inquired what the old man could possibly have desired to see him about.
“To make his will, Miss Sally,” answered the lawyer; “it has been signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of myself and John Brown, my clerk, and its contents are to remain locked in our respective breasts and my strong box until the due time arrives for its administration. That he has made a will argues that he has, as you may suppose, some property to leave, and that the people in our neighbourhood were not so far wrong in calling him a miser; but he has hoarded to some purpose, and I wish that all misers would leave their gold in as satisfactory a manner as he has done.”
In vain Miss Sally endeavoured to elicit further information; the lawyer laughed and rubbed his hands, but not a word more could she get out of him than he chose to say. Then turning the subject, he steadily declined again entering on it, though he made himself agreeable by conversing in a cheerful tone on various others.