come to me one day, and he says--

'It's all right, Polly, and I must tell you because you're the same
as myself, though I don't like to talk as if we was waiting for dead
men's shoes. Long may he wear them! But father's told me he has left
everything to me, right and safe, though I am the second son. My
brother John never did get on with father, but when all's mine,
we'll see that John don't starve.'

And that day week old master was a corpse.

He was found dead in his bed, and the doctor said it was old age and
a sudden breaking up.

Mrs. Blake she cried and took on fearful, more than was right or
natural, and when the will was to be read in the parlour after the
funeral she come into the kitchen where I was sitting crying
too--not that I was fond of old master, but the kind of crying there
is at funerals is catching, I think, and besides, I was sorry for
Master Harry, who was a good son, and quite broken down.

'You can come and hear the will read,' she says, 'for all your
impudence, you hussy!'

And I don't know why I went in after her impudence, but I did. Mr.
Sigglesfield was there, and some of the relations, who had come a
long way to hear if they was to pull anything out of the fire; and
Master Harry was there, looking very pale through all his
sun-brownness. And says he, 'I suppose the will's got to be read,
but my father, he told me what I was to expect. It's all to me, and