know everything.'

Richard did not seek further information. He drank his tea standing. In
five minutes Alice had bustled away for an evening with friends. Mrs.
Mutimer cleared the table without speaking.

'Now get your sewing, mother, and sit down,' began Richard. 'I want to
have a talk with you.'

The mother cast a rather suspicious glance. There was an impressiveness
in the young man's look and tone which disposed her to obey without
remark.

'How long is it,' Richard asked, when attention waited upon him, 'since
you heard anything of father's uncle, my namesake?'

Mrs. Mutimer's face exhibited the dawning of intelligence, an
unwrinkling here and there, a slight rounding of the lips.

'Why, what of him?' she asked in an undertone, leaving a needle
unthreaded.

'The old man's just dead.'

Agitation seized the listener, agitation of a kind most unusual in her.
Her hands trembled, her eyes grew wide.

'You haven't heard anything of him lately?' pursued Richard.

'Heard? Not I. No more did your father ever since two years afore we was
married. I'd always thought he was dead long ago. What of him, Dick?'

'From what I'm told I thought you'd perhaps been keeping things to
yourself. 'Twouldn't have been unlike you, mother. He knew all about us,
so the lawyer tells me.'

'The lawyer?'

'Well, I'd better out with it. He's died without a will. His real
property--that means his houses and land--belongs to me; his personal
property--that's his money--'ll have to be divided between me, and
Alice, and 'Arry. You're out of the sharing, mother.'

He said it jokingly, but Mrs. Mutimer did not join in his laugh. Her
palms were closely pressed together; still trembling, she gazed straight
before her, with a far-off look.

'His houses--his land?' she murmured, as if she had not quite heard.
'What did he want with more than one house?'

The absurd question was all that could find utterance. She seemed to be
reflecting on that point.

'Would you like to hear what it all comes to?' Richard resumed. His
voice was unnatural, forcibly suppressed, quivering at pauses. His eyes
gleamed, and there was a centre of warm colour on each of his cheeks. He
had taken a note-book from his pocket, and the leaves rustled under his
tremulous fingers.

'The lawyer, a man called Yottle, just gave me an idea of the different
investments and so on. The real property consists of a couple of houses
in Belwick, both let, and an estate at