completely disowned him as a father; they raked him fore and aft; they
riddled him with a hundred shafts of scorn; they repeatedly said that
they never wanted to see his face again; they put him out of their
lives and urgently requested him to put them out of his; they expected
nothing of him and they certainly did not want him to expect anything
of them; and so on and so forth. And in spite of all these bitter
rebukings, old Joseph had come back to New York ready and willing to
let bygones be bygones if they would only meet him half way.

Geoffrey declared in so many words that his father had played a scurvy
trick on all of them. He managed to give utterance to this violent
opinion before his attorney could check his unnecessary eloquence.
After that, Geoffrey, subdued and desolate, kept extremely quiet and
suffered considerably under the convicting gaze of his sisters and
their husbands, all of whom were inclined to disown him there and then
as a brother for his reckless implication that their father was as
sane as any of them.

Thomas Singleton Bingle was to receive, in round figures, fifteen
million dollars under the will of his uncle, after the funeral
expenses and all just debts had been paid. It was really quite
staggering. If Thomas Singleton Bingle had not been so completely
wrapped up in his ears, it is certain that he would have acted as any
other intelligent human being would have acted at a time like this. He
would have gone stark, staring mad.

But wait! After all, he DID become a bit daffy. Observing the
desolated, crushed attitude of his three cousins, his honest heart
smote him sorely. He piped up from the depths of his chair and
announced that all he wanted out of the estate was the amount that he