“You must have heard at the time. It was not a will I approved--nothing unnatural ever gets any support from me. They say lawyers are full of dodges; it would have been better for me if I had put my principles in my pocket many a time. Men have come to me with the most ridiculous instructions, what I call wicked--they take a spite at some one, or some boy behaves foolishly (to be sure, it’s a girl in this case, which is more uncommon), and out he goes out of the will. I don’t approve of such pranks for my part.” “You would like the good to share with the bad, and the guilty with the innocent,” said Turny, not without a reflection of his own. “Not so much as that; but it doesn’t follow--always--that a boy is bad because he has kicked over the traces in his youth--and if he is bad, then he is the one above all that wants some provision made for him to keep him from getting badder. There’s that poor wretch, Bob Tredgold; I’ve kept him in my office, he thinks, because his brother always stood up for him. Nothing of the kind; Tredgold would have been delighted to hear he had tripped into the mire or gone down under an underground railway train on his way home. And the poor beggar believes now that his brother has provided for him--not a penny will he have, or I am mistaken. I must try to get something for him out of the girls.” “The oldest girl, of course, will have it all?” Mr. Turny said. “I suppose so,” said the solicitor, “if he don’t prove intestate after all; that’s always on the cards with that sort of man, indeed with every sort of man. They don’t like to part with it even on paper, and give the power into someone else’s hands. Women are rather different. It seems to amuse them to give all their things away--on paper. I don’t know that there’s much good searching further. He must have sent for some local man, that would save him trouble. And then he knew I would remonstrate if there was any ridiculous vengeance in his thoughts, which most likely there would have been.” “What’s the scope of that old one, the one you’ve got in your hand?” “Oh, that!” said Mr. Sturgeon, looking at it as if it were a reptile. “You remember, I am sure you must have heard it at the time, most of the money was left to the other, what was her ridiculous name? Something fantastic, I know.” “Stella,” the executor said, peering eagerly through his double gold glasses at the paper, into which his fellow executor showed no inclination to give him further insight. “That’s it, Stella! because she was his favourite--the eldest sister, to my mind, being much the nicest of the two.” “She is a nice, quiet girl,” said Mr. Turny. And he thought with a grudge of Fred, who might have been coming into this fine fortune if he had been worth his salt. “There is this advantage in it,” he said, “it makes a fine solid lump of money. Divide it, and it’s not half the good.” “A man shouldn’t have a lot of children who entertains that idea,” said Mr. Sturgeon.