ves; but I contrived to peep
from behind it, and to see the crowd that lined the road to watch us as
we wound slowly on.

If these outsiders, who only saw the procession and the funeral, were
moved almost to enthusiasm by the miser's post-mortem liberality, it may
be believed that the guests who were bidden to the feast did not fail to
obey the ancient precept, and speak well of the dead. The tables (they
were rickety) literally groaned under the weight of eatables and
drinkables, and the dinner was so prolonged that Jem and I got terribly
tired, in spite of the fun of watching the faces of the men we did not
know, to see which got the reddest.

My father wanted us to go home before the reading of the will, which
took place in the front parlour; but the lawyer said, "I think the young
gentlemen should remain," for which we were very much obliged to him;
though the pale-faced man said quite crossly--"Is there any special
reason for crowding the room with children, who are not even relatives
of the deceased?" which made us feel so much ashamed that I think we
should have slipped out by ourselves; but the lawyer, who made no
answer, pushed us gently before him to the top of the room, which was
soon far too full to get out of by the door.

It was very damp and musty. In several places the paper hung in great
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