Just as she galloped up they took off their hats. Someone who had been on his knees stood upright--she saw the stain of wet earth where he had been kneeling; forgot the dented hat; wondered if he knew of the Marvel Cleaning Pad that had done so wonderfully with Dad's breeches when he took a toss last Friday.
Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him home ... could do no good--now.
“Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders.”
Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her because of the pain.... Better come away.
She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ... all crumpled up....
Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over the twisted face.
Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but to which memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin touched the earth seven feet down....
Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of documents; interminable writing of signature; interminable making of lists. And then the word LOT. “Lot I,” “Lot 2,” “Lot 50,” “Lot 200”--a hammerlike word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep, producing grotesque nightmares, as “Lot 12, a polished oak coffin, finished plain, brass Handles.”
No! No! That was not to be sold!--leaden hands holding her down; stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting “Stop!”
Then sudden consciousness--only a dream! Bolt upright in bed staring into the darkness. A dream? How much of it a dream? Was it all a dream? The fevered brain would fetch her from her bed, groping to Dad's room, striking a match--no familiar form upon the bed; a big white ticket--“Lot 56.”
Back to the hot, crumpled couch, there, tossing, to lie attempting a grasp, a realisation of what it all meant....
A dark little office in Dublin.... So much the “Lots” had fetched, so much the balance at the bank; no investments, it was to be feared; no insurance, my dear Miss Humfray; so much the bills and other claims on the estate.... “Don't wish to be bothered with figures? Of course not, my dear.... And then we come to the balance--I'm afraid a few pounds, practically nothing....”