"Sure he's a better boy than ever your John was," said Mistress
Punchard, up in arms for her offspring.

"John's legs are as straight as the bed post," retorted his sister,
and then the two women began a war of words, in the midst of which,
having drunk my dish of coffee, I slipped away.

I rarely speculated on my future, and my father never spoke of it.
We took it for granted that I should succeed him in his little
property, and during the school holidays I sometimes accompanied
him to market, and learned to handle samples of grain and to
discuss the points of his fat cattle.

It was when I was approaching the end of my seventeenth year that I
began to think of the future more nearly. My father had suffered
long--though Mistress Pennyquick and I had known nothing of it, he
being so reticent--from a disease which nowadays physicians call
angina pectoris, a disease that grips a man by the chest, as 'twere
his breastbones are ground together, with breathlessness and
exquisite pain. As he grew older, the attacks recurred more
frequently and with greater violence, and after one of them, the
first I had seen with my own eyes, he sent for Mr. Vetch, the
attorney, and was closeted with him a great while in his room.
Mistress Pennyquick's face was very grave when she spoke to me
about it afterwards.

"'Tis a bad sign when a man sends for his lawyer, Humphrey," she
said. "I can't abide 'un, for they always make me think of my
latter end. Your father have made his will, I'll be bound, and I