“I suppose you think it a poor stake! I suppose you can’t see anything in that old man’s life beyond his money; but I don’t care a curse what my inheritance is! I never obeyed any of my grandfather’s wishes in his lifetime, but now that he’s dead his last wish is mandatory. I’m going out there to spend a year if I die for it. Do you get my idea?” “Humph! You always were a stormy petrel,” he sneered. “I fancy it will be safer to keep our most agreeable acquaintance on a strictly business basis. If you accept the terms of the will—” “Of course I accept them! Do you think I am going to make a row, refuse to fulfil that old man’s last wish! I gave him enough trouble in his life without disappointing him in his grave. I suppose you’d like to have me fight the will; but I’m going to disappoint you.” He said nothing, but played with his pencil. I had never disliked him so heartily; he was so smug and comfortable. His office breathed the very spirit of prosperity. I wished to finish my business and get away. “I suppose the region out there has a high death-rate. How’s the malaria?” “Not alarmingly prevalent, I understand. There’s a summer resort over on one side of Lake Annandale. The place is really supposed to be wholesome. I don’t believe your grandfather had homicide in mind in sending you there.” “No, he probably thought the rustication would make a man of me. Must I do my own victualing? I suppose I’ll be allowed to eat.” “Bates can cook for you. He’ll supply the necessities. I’ll instruct him to obey your orders. I assume you’ll not have many guests,—in fact,”—he studied the back of his hand intently,—“while that isn’t stipulated, I doubt whether it was your grandfather’s intention that you should surround yourself—” “With boisterous companions!” I supplied the words in my cheerfullest tone. “No; my conduct shall be exemplary, Mr. Pickering,” I added, with affable irony. He picked up a single sheet of thin type-written paper and passed it across the table. It was a formal acquiescence in the provisions of the will. Pickering had prepared it in advance of my coming, and this assumption that I would accept the terms irritated me. Assumptions as to what I should do under given conditions had always irritated me, and accounted, in a large measure, for my proneness to surprise and disappoint people. Pickering summoned a clerk to witness my signature. “How soon shall you take possession?” he asked. “I have to make a record of that.” “I shall start for Indiana to-morrow,” I answered. “You are prompt,” he replied, deliberately folding in quarters the paper I had just signed. “I hoped you might dine with me before going out; but I fancy New York is pretty tame after the cafés and bazaars of the East.”