strips from the walls, and the oddest part of all was that every article
of furniture in the room, and even the hearthrug, was covered with
sheets of newspaper pinned over to preserve it. I sat in the corner of a
sofa, where I could read the trial of a man who murdered somebody
twenty-five years before, but I never got to the end of it, for it went
on behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all the
time and hid it. Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with his
head on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names were
read out in the will. Even then he only half awoke, and the fat man
drove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in Jem's
ear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having saved
the life of his cat.

I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections of
the old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; and
the lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times over
that we really had been invited to the funeral. After our legacies were
known about they were so cross that we managed to scramble through the
window, and wandered round the garden. As we sat under the trees we
could hear high words within, and by and by all the men came out and
talked in angry groups about the will. For when all was said and done,
it appeared that the old miser had not left a penny to any one of the
funeral party but Jem and me, and that he had left Walnut-tree Farm to a
certain Mrs. Wood, of whom nobody knew anything.

"The wording is so peculiar," the fat man said to the pale-faced man and
a third who had come out with them; "'left to her as a sign of sympathy,
if not an act of reparation.' He must have known whether he owed her any
reparation or not, if he were in his senses."