Then the undertaker’s men adjusted the lid of the coffin, hiding Aunt Hannah’s face, and screwed in the eight brass screws, and clumped down the dark stairs with their burden, and so across the pavement between two rows of sluttish sightseers, to the hearse.  Uncle Meshach, with the aid only of his stick, entered the first coach; John Stanway and Fred Ryley—­the rules of precedence were thus inflexible!—­occupied the second; and Arthur Twemlow, with the family lawyer and the family doctor, took the third.  Leonora remained in the house with the servant to spread the feast.

The church was barely four hundred yards away, and in less than half an hour they were all in the house again; all save Aunt Hannah, who had already, in the vault of the Myatts, passed the first five minutes of the tedium of waiting for the Day of Judgment.  And now, as they gathered round the fish, the fowl, the ham, the cake, the preserves, the tea, the wines and the spirits, etiquette demanded that they should be cheerful, should show a resignation to the will of heaven, and should eat heartily.  And although the rapid-ticking clock on the mantelpiece in the parlour pointed only to a little better than three o’clock they were obliged to eat heartily, for fear of giving pain to Uncle Meshach; to drink much was not essential, but nothing could have excused abstention from the solid fare.  The repast, actively conducted by the mourning host, was not finished until nearly half-past four.  Then Twemlow and the doctor said that they must leave.

‘Nay, nay,’ Meshach complained.  ’There’s the will to be read.  It’s right and proper as all the guests should hear the will, and it’ll take nobbut a few minutes.’

The enfeebled old man talked more and more the dialect which his father and mother had talked over his cradle.

‘Better without us, old friend!’ the doctor said jauntily.  ’Besides, my patients!’ And by dint of blithe obstinacy he managed to get away, and also to cover the retreat of Twemlow.

‘I shall call in a day or two,’ said Arthur to Uncle Meshach as they shook hands.

‘Ay! call and see th’ old ruin!’ Meshach replied, and dropping back into his chair, ‘Now, Dain!’ he ordered.

David Dain drew a long white envelope from his breast pocket.

‘"This is the last will and testament of me, Hannah Margaret Myatt,"’ the lawyer began to read quickly in his thick voice, ’"of Church Street, Bursley, in the county of Stafford, spinster.  I commit my body to the grave and my soul to God in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection through my Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ.  I bequeath ten pounds each to my dear nephew John Stanway, and to his wife Leonora, to purchase mourning at my decease, and five pounds each for the same purpose to my dear great-nephew Frederick Wellington Ryley, and to my great-nieces Ethel, Rosalys, and Millicent Stanway, and to any other children of the said John and Leonora Stanway should they have such, and should such children survive me.”  This will is dated twelve years ago,’ the lawyer stopped to explain.  He continued:  ’"I further bequeath to my great-nephew Frederick Wellington Ryley the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds."’