The Fallow field farmer held his length of crape aloft and inquired:  ‘What shall do with this?’

‘Oh, you keep it,’ said one or two.

Coxwell rubbed his chin.  ‘Don’t like to rob the widder.’

‘What’s left goes to the undertaker?’ asked Grossby.

‘To be sure,’ said Barnes; and Kilne added:  ‘It’s a job’:  Lawyer Perkins ejaculating confidently, ’Perquisites of office, gentlemen; perquisites of office!’ which settled the dispute and appeased every conscience.

A survey of the table ensued.  The mourners felt hunger, or else thirst; but had not, it appeared, amalgamated the two appetites as yet.  Thirst was the predominant declaration; and Grossby, after an examination of the decanters, unctuously deduced the fact, which he announced, that port and sherry were present.

‘Try the port,’ said Kilne.

‘Good?’ Barnes inquired.

A very intelligent ‘I ought to know,’ with a reserve of regret at the extension of his intimacy with the particular vintage under that roof, was winked by Kilne.

Lawyer Perkins touched the arm of a mourner about to be experimental on Kilne’s port

’I think we had better wait till young Mr. Harrington takes the table, don’t you see?’

‘Yes,-ah!’ croaked Goren.  ‘The head of the family, as the saying goes!’

‘I suppose we shan’t go into business to-day?’ Joyce carelessly observed.

Lawyer Perkins answered: 

’No.  You can’t expect it.  Mr. Harrington has led me to anticipate that he will appoint a day.  Don’t you see?’

‘Oh!  I see,’ returned Joyce.  ’I ain’t in such a hurry.  What’s he doing?’

Doubleday, whose propensities were waggish, suggested ‘shaving,’ but half ashamed of it, since the joke missed, fell to as if he were soaping his face, and had some trouble to contract his jaw.

The delay in Evan’s attendance on the guests of the house was caused by the fact that Mrs. Mel had lain in wait for him descending, to warn him that he must treat them with no supercilious civility, and to tell him partly the reason why.  On hearing the potential relations in which they stood toward the estate of his father, Evan hastily and with the assurance of a son of fortune, said they should be paid.

‘That’s what they would like to hear,’ said Mrs. Mel.  ’You may just mention it when they’re going to leave.  Say you will fix a day to meet them.’

‘Every farthing!’ pursued Evan, on whom the tidings were beginning to operate.  ‘What! debts? my poor father!’

‘And a thumping sum, Van.  You will open your eyes wider.’

’But it shall be paid, mother,—­it shall be paid.  Debts?  I hate them.  I’d slave night and day to pay them.’

Mrs. Mel spoke in a more positive tense:  ‘And so will I, Van.  Now, go.’