“Now I wisht they’d find a later will,” said Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife, tying on her bonnet in the best bedroom. The persons who had lingered to support the family through the ordeal of will-reading were driving off, one after another. “Oh, but Aunt Lindy’ll carry things before her! Is she anywhere near? I don’t want her to hear me.” “Things don’t turn out that way except in novel-stories,” observed another woman, with her mouth full of pins. “They don’t find wills hid around in stockin’s or Bibles. I declare, I’m real sorry for Sereny. I don’t see how old Mr. Jeffr’s can lay easy in his grave, turnin’ his own child out to give place to a big, hearty feller, with money in his own right.” “I always thought so much of Serene,” said Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife. “We was taken into full church membership on the same day; and we used to run together and swap dinners at the Gum College. Aunt Lindy was so hard on her. I’ve asked Serene to go home with me and stay as long as she wanted to. But she has to take that horse and buggy back. And I don’t think she could stand it, so near the old home.” “Now what do you think?” said Jesse Jeffries’ wife, coming in, with her black-mitted hands pressed together. “Things is willed to Sereny, after all.” The bedroom resounded with ejaculations. “How do you make that out?” inquired Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife. “I’d give all my yearlin’ calves to have it so.” “There was another piece wrote on to the paper, that Jesse missed. ’Pears like Mozy cut her off, and then repented, and went right to another lawyer and had it fixed, for it’s in two different handwrites. Things stands just as they did in the first.” “I’m sorry Lindy gets her yearly portion,” said Mrs. Holmes, in an irreverent aside. “Let me get out of this crowd: I’m goin’ to hug Serene.” “I _thought_ ’twas a great pity,” exclaimed the woman with pins in her mouth, bestowing them rapidly about her bonnet ribbons, “if Sereny couldn’t have the homestead to bring up her boy in!” “You said folks never found new wills!” observed a neighbor triumphantly. “Well,” retorted the woman, turning her face from side to side to get her chin set properly in the bonnet ribbons, “they _didn’t_ find any. Jesse Jeffr’s only fooled around and didn’t read all of the first one. They might ’a’ knowed _Jesse Jeffr’s_ ’ud make a mess of it. _He_ don’t know how to do a thing right.” This opinion was shielded from the ear of Mrs. Jesse. She was busy nodding her leghorn bonnet and exchanging parting civilities with several old neighbors. But Little Jimmy Holmes’s wife had flown upstairs, and interfered with Jesse Jeffries and Sister McGafferty and a number of others. Serena lay upon a bed, and the air reeked with camphor. “She’s overcome like,” explained Uncle Jesse. “Let me get to her,” said Mrs. Holmes. Having got to her, Mrs. Holmes raised Serena’s head on her arm, and began to laugh.