wiping.

The terrier awoke, yawned, and was waddling down from its couch to make
friends, when Master Dick returned.

"Mother wants to know who you are and what's your business.
Gerty wouldn't come down when she heard you weren't Jack Phillips."

"Then tell your mother that I am your uncle, John Flood. That will
satisfy her, perhaps."

"Whe--ew!" Dick took him in from top to toe, in a long incredulous
stare; but turned and went without another word.

It may have been five minutes before the door opened and Mrs. Flood
entered, with an air nicely balanced between curiosity, _hauteur_, and
injured innocence--a shabby-genteel woman, in a widow's cap and a black
cashmere gown which had been too near the frying-pan.

"Good morning."

Mrs. Flood bowed stiffly, not to say stonily, folded her wrists
accurately in front of her, over her waistband, and waited.

"I am John Flood, you know--poor Lionel's brother. I have just come
from Cudmore & Cudmore's, the solicitors, to talk with you, if I may,
about this will. It seems that I have a legacy, but beyond this I know
nothing, and indeed until Messrs. Cudmore wrote I wasn't even aware of
an illness."

Mrs. Flood's eyes seemed to answer, if such a thing could be said in a
ladylike way, that he might tell that to the Marines. But, without
relenting their hostility, she took occasion to mop them.

"It was a cruel will," she murmured. "My husband and I had differences;
in fact, we have lived apart for many years. Still--" She broke off.
"You know, of course, that he went wrong--took to living with natives
and adopted their horrible ways--in the end, I believe, turned Hindu."

"God bless my soul! But he used to write regularly--up to the end."

"No doubt." The two words were full of spiteful meaning, though what
that meaning was Parson Jack could not guess.

"His letters gave no hint of--of this."

Again Mrs. Flood's bitter smile gave him--politely--the lie.

"He drank, too," she went on, after a cold pause. "I had always
supposed it was the one thing those natives didn't do. We thought of
contesting the will on the ground of undue influence and his mind being
gone."

"Did Lionel leave them much, then?"

"'Them'?" she queried.

"His friends over there--the natives."

"He left nothing but this legacy of five thousand pounds, and the
residue in equal shares to his poor family." Here her handkerchief came
into play again. "Only, as it turns out, there i