The coal magnate threw back his head on the pillows and laughed long and loud. He laughed until he grew purple and gasped for breath, and he laughed while he choked, and Sheila flew about for stimulants. For a few breathless moments Sheila thought she had whipped up the hearse--to use the mammoth man's own metaphor--but after a panting half-hour the heart subsided and the breath came easier.
"You nearly did for me that time, boss. But it fits; Jehoshaphat, it fits me like a B. V. D.! The only difference you might put down to simplified spelling. Eh?" And he cautiously chuckled at his joke.
While Sheila was making ready for the night he chuckled and lapsed into florid, heliotrope studies by turns. "It's straight, what I told you about being a sinner," he gave verbal expression to his thoughts at last. "That's why I don't leave a cent to charity--not a cent. Ain't going to have any peaked-faced, oily-tongued jackasses saying over my coffin that I tried to buy my entrance ticket into the Lord Almighty's kingdom. No, sirree! I know I've lived high, eaten well, and drunk some. I've made the best of every good bargain that came within eyeshot. I treated my own handsome--and I let the rest of the world go hang. Went to church Easter Sunday every year and put a bill in the plate; you can figure for yourself about how much I've given to charity. Never had any time to think of it, anyway--probably wouldn't have given if I had. Always thought Mother'd live longer'n me and she'd take care of that end of it. But she didn't."
For a moment Sheila thought the man was going to cry; his lower lip quivered like a baby's, and his eyes grew red and watery. There was no denying it, the man was a caricature; even his grief was ludicrous. He wiped his eyes with the back of his heliotrope sleeve and finished what he had to say. "Don't it beat all how the pious vultures croak over you the minute you're done for--reminding you you can't take your money away with you? Didn't the parson--first time he came--sit in that chair and open up and begin about the rich man's squeezing through a needle's eye and a lot about putting away temporal stuff? I don't aim to do any squeezing into heaven, I can tell you. And I fixed him all right. Ha, ha! I told him as long as the money wouldn't do me and Mother any more good I'd settle it so's it couldn't benefit any one else. And that's exactly what I've done. Left it all for a monument for us, fancy marble, carved statues, and the whole outfit. It'll beat that toadstool-looking tomb of that prince somewhere in Asia all hollow. Ha, ha!"