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“Stupid wenches you are,” Simon admonished his sisters. “And curious. Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead.”

Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak of a parrot, put forth her head. “The reins of a flaming chariot can’t drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he promised.”

“Great is your avarice,” Simon declared.

“Fonder he was of me than any one,” Annie cried. “The birthdays he presented me with dresses–until he was sacked. While I was cribbing, did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day.”

“I was his chief friend,” said Simon. “We were closer than brothers. So grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a funeral sermon on my brother Shacob.”

Jacob’s virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly. Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed cake to the little children of the capel.

Wheedlers flattered him for gain: “The watch of a nobleman you carry” and “The ring would buy a field,” said those about Sion; “Never seen a more exact fact simily of King George in my life than you,” cried spongers in London public-houses. All grasped whatever gifts they could and turned from him laughing: “The watch of the fob is brass”; “No more worth than a play marble is the ring”; “Old Griffiths is the bloomin’ limit.” Yet Jacob had delight in the thought that folk passed him rich for his apparel and acts.

“Waste of hours very awful is this,” Simon uttered by and by. He brought out his order book and a blacklead pencil. “Take stock will I now and put down.”

He searched the pockets of Jacob’s garments and the drawers in the chest, and knelt on his knees and peered under Jacob’s bed; and all that he found were trashy clothes and boots. His sisters tore open the seams of the garments and spread their fingers in the hollow places, and they did not find anything.

“Jewellary he had,” exclaimed Annie. “Much was the value of his diamond ring. ‘This I will to you,’ he said to me. Champion she would seem on my finger. Half a hundred guineas was her worth.”

“Where is the watch and chain?” Jane fach demanded. “Gold they were. Link like the fingers of feet the chain had. These I have.”

“Lovely were his solitaires,” cried Annie. “They are mine.”

“Liar of a bitch,” said Jane fach. “‘All is yours,’ mouthed Shacob my brother, who hears me in the Palace.”

Simon answered neither yea nor no. He stepped down to the woman of the house. “I have a little list here of the things my brother left in your keeping,” he began. “Number wan, gold watch–“

The woman opened her lips and spoke: “Godstruth, he didn’t have a bean to his name. Gold watch! I had to call him in the mornings. What with blacking his whiskers and being tender on his feet, which didn’t allow of him to run to say the least of it, I was about pretty early. Else he’d never get to Ward’s at all. And Balham is a long run from here.”

“I will come back and see you later,” Simon replied, and he returned to his sisters. “Hope I do,” he said to them. “You discover his affairs. All belong to you. Tall was his regard for you two. Now we will prepare to bury him. Privilege to bury the dead. Sending the corpse to the crystal capel. Not wedded are you like me. Heavy is the keep of three children and the wife.”