Between eight and nine Jay Dee sat down before his meagre fire and rusty
stove, drank his weak tea and toasted his bread. The windows clicked
with the night wind. The furniture was old, worn, unstable, except the
large desk behind him full of pigeonholes and drawers. Now and then
he turned and wrote on scraps of paper. Tea finished, he collected the
scraps and copied:
Mr. Stephen Ballister: I feel, as growing somewhat old, I ought to make
my will, and sometime, leaving this world for a better, would ask you
to make my will for me, for which reasonable charge, putting this so
it cannot be broken by lawyers, who will talk too much and are vain
of themselves, that is, leaving all my property of all kinds to my
relative, James Winslow of Wimberton, and not anything to Albion Dee;
for he has not much sense but is hasty; for to look after the choir is
not his business, and to sit on an old man and throw him from his own
wagon and pay him thirty dollars is hasty, for it is not good sense, and
not anything to Stephen Ballister, for he must be rich with talking so
much in courts of this world. Put this all in my will, but if unable or
unwilling on account of remorse for speaking so in the court, please to
inform that I may get another lawyer. Yours,
Jay Dee.
He sealed and addressed the letter, put it in his pocket, and noticed
the ruinous rent in his coat. He sighed, murmured over it complainingly,
and turned up the lapel of the coat. Pins in great variety and number
were there in careful order, some new, some small, some long and old and
yellow. He selected four and pinned the rent together, sighing. Then he
took three folded bills from his vest pocket, unfolded, counted and put
them back, felt of the letter in his coat gently, murmured, “I had the
best of Albion there; I had him there,” took his candle and went up
peacefully and venerably to bed.
A NIGHT'S LODGING
FATHER WILISTON was a retired clergyman, so distinguished from his
son Timothy, whose house stood on the ridge north of the old village
of Win-throp, and whose daily path lay between his house and the new
growing settlement around the valley station. It occurred at odd times
to Father Wiliston that Timothy's path was somewhat undeviating. The
clergyman had walked widely since Win-throp was first left behind
fifty-five years back, at a time when the town was smaller and cows
cropped the Green but never a lawn mower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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