What a fool that young doctor was! what if he did work a little harder to make the old people an allowance? However, it was no business of his. With a sigh of general discontent Mr Brown pulled his bell violently, and had the fire made up, and asked for his tea. His tea! he never touched it when it came, but sat pshawing and humphing at it, making himself indignant over that fool of a young doctor. And what if these poor people, sour and sore after their misfortune, should think that this too was _his_ fault CHAPTER III. Next morning Mr Brown, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up to his ears as usual, went down at his ordinary rapid pace to old Mrs Thomson’s house. Nancy had locked the house-door, which, like an innocent almost rural door as it was, opened from without. She was upstairs, very busy in a most congenial occupation--turning out the old lady’s wardrobe, and investigating the old stores of lace and fur and jewellery. She knew them pretty well by heart before; but now that, according to her idea, they were her own, everything naturally acquired a new value. She had laid them out in little heaps, each by itself, on the dressing-table; a faintly-glittering row of old rings and brooches, most of them entirely valueless, though Nancy was not aware of that. On the bed--the bed where two days ago that poor old pallid figure still lay in solemn ownership of the “property” around it--Nancy had spread forth her mistress’s ancient boas and vast muffs, half a century old; most of them were absolutely dropping to pieces; but as long as they held together with any sort of integrity, Nancy was not the woman to lessen the number of her possessions. The bits of lace were laid out upon the old sofa, each at full length. With these delightful accumulations all round her, Nancy was happy. She had entered, as she supposed, upon an easier and more important life. Mistress of the empty house and all its contents, she carried herself with an air of elation and independence which she had never ventured to display before. No doubt had ever crossed her mind on the subject. She had taken it for granted that the expulsion of the Christians meant only her own triumph. She had even taken credit, both to herself and other people, for greater guiltiness than she really had incurred. The will was not her doing, though Mrs Christian said so and Nancy was willing to believe as much; but she was glad to be identified as the cause of it, and glad to feel that she was the person who would enjoy the benefit. She was in this holiday state of mind, enjoying herself among her supposed treasures, when she was interrupted by the repeated and imperative demands for entrance made by Mr Brown at the locked door.