‘Shall I light the gas?’ she suggested.  The room was always obscure, and that evening happened to be a sombre one.

‘Ay!’

‘There!’ she said brightly, when the gas flared, ’that’s better, isn’t it?  Aren’t you going to smoke?’

‘Ay!’

In reaching a second spill from the spill-jar on the mantelpiece she noticed the clock.  It was only a quarter past five.  ‘He may call yet,’ she dreamed, and then a more piquant thought:  ’He may be at home when I get back.’

There was a perfunctory knock at the house-door.  She started.

‘It’s the “Signal” lad,’ Meshach explained.  ’He keeps on bringing it, but I never look at it.’

She went into the lobby for the paper, and then read aloud to Uncle Meshach the items of local news.  The clock showed a quarter to six.  Suddenly it struck her that Arthur Twemlow might have called quite early in the afternoon and that Meshach might have forgotten to tell her.  If he had perchance called, and perchance informed Meshach that he was going on to Hillport, and if he had walked up by the road while she came down by the fields!  The idea was too dreadful.

‘Has Mr. Twemlow been to see you yet?’ she demanded, after a long silence, pretending to be interested in the ‘Signal.’

‘No,’ said Meshach; ‘why dost ask?’

‘I remembered he said he should.’

‘He’ll come, he’ll come,’ Meshach murmured confidently.  ’Dain’s been in,’ he added, ‘wi’ papers to sign, probate o’ Hannah’s will.  Seemingly John’s not satisfied, from what Dain hints.’

‘Not satisfied with what?’ Flushing a little, she dropped the paper; but she was still busily employed in expecting Arthur to arrive.

‘Eh, I canna’ tell you, lass.’  Meshach gave a grim sigh.  ’You know as I altered my will?’

‘Jack mentioned it.’

’Me and her, we thought it over.  It was her as first said that Fred was getting a nice young chap, and very respectable, and why should he be left out in the cold?  And so I says to her, I says, “Well, you can make your will i’ favour o’ Fred, if you’ve a mind.”  “Nay, Meshach,” her says, “never ask me to cut out our John’s name.”  “Well,” I says to her, “if you won’t, I will.  It’ll give ’em both an even chance.  Us’n die pretty near together, me and you, Hannah, it’ll be a toss-up,” I says.  Wasn’t that fair?’ Leonora made no reply.  ‘Wasn’t that fair?’ he repeated.

She could not be sure, even then, whether Uncle Meshach had devised in perfect seriousness this extraordinary arrangement for dealing justly between the surviving members of the Myatt family, or whether he had always had a private humorous appreciation of the fantastic element in it.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Well, lass,’ he continued persuasively, sitting up in his chair, ’us ignored young Fred for more till twenty year.  And it wasna’ right.  Hannah said it wasna’ right as Fred should suffer for his mother and his grandfeyther.  And then us give Fred and your John an equal chance, and John’s lost, and now John isna’ satisfied, by all accounts.’  She gazed at him with a gentle smile.  ‘Why dostna’ speak, lass?’