‘Well, I’m dashed!’ muttered John.  ’Who’d have thought of that?  You’ve got the will, then?’

Liversage nodded.

The Hessians had an elder sister, Mrs Bott, widow of a colour merchant, and Mrs Bott had died suddenly three months ago, the night after a journey to Manchester. (Even at the funeral the brothers had scandalized the town by not speaking to each other.) Mrs Bott had wealth, wit, and wisdom, together with certain peculiarities, of which one was an excessive secrecy.  It was known that she had made a will, because she had more than once notified the fact, in a tone suggestive of highly important issues, but the will had refused to be found.  So Mr Liversage had been instructed to take out letters of administration of the estate, which, in the continued absence of the will, would be divided equally between the brothers.  And twelve or thirteen thousand pounds may be compared to a financial beef-steak that cuts up very handsomely for two persons.  The carving-knife was about to descend on its succulence, when, lo! the will!

‘How came the will to be in the post?’ asked Robert.

‘The handwriting on the envelope was your sister’s,’ said Liversage.  ’And the package was posted in Manchester.  Very probably she had taken the will to Manchester to show it to a lawyer or something of that sort, and then she was afraid of losing it on the journey back, and so she sent it to herself by registered post.  But before it arrived, of course, she was dead.’

‘That wasn’t a bad scheme of poor Mary Ann’s!’ John commented.

‘It was just like her!’ said Robert, speaking pointedly to Liversage.  ‘But what an odd thing!’

Now, both these men were, no doubt excusably, agonized by curiosity to learn the contents of the will.  But would either of them be the first to express that curiosity?  Never in this world!  Not for the fortune itself!  To do so would scarcely have been Bursleyish.  It would certainly not have been Hessianlike.  So Liversage was obliged at length to say—­

‘I reckon I’d better read you the will, eh?’

The brothers nodded.

‘Mind you,’ said Liversage, ’it’s not my will.  I’ve had nothing to do with it; so kindly keep your hair on.  As a matter of fact, she must have drawn it up herself.  It’s not drawn properly at all, but it’s witnessed all right, and it’ll hold water, just as well as if the blooming Lord Chancellor had fixed it up for her in person.’

He produced the document and read, awkwardly and self-consciously—­

’"This is my will.  You are both of you extremely foolish, John and Robert, and I’ve often told you so.  Nobody has ever understood, and nobody ever will understand, why you quarrelled like that over Annie Emery.  You are punishing yourselves, but you are punishing her as well, and it isn’t fair her waiting all these years.  So I give all my estate, no matter what it is, to whichever of you marries Annie.  And I hope this