w,
there was ample money. But I naturally wanted to consult the wishes of
his surviving relatives and then the trouble really began. You see, it
had been discovered that Mr Hurlbird had had nothing whatever the matter
with his heart. His lungs had been a little affected all through his
life and he had died of bronchitis. It struck Miss Florence Hurlbird
that, since her brother had died of lungs and not of heart, his money
ought to go to lung patients. That, she considered, was what her brother
would have wished. On the other hand, by a kink, that I could not at the
time understand, Miss Hurlbird insisted that I ought to keep the money
all to myself. She said that she did not wish for any monuments to the
Hurlbird family. At the time I thought that that was because of a New
England dislike for necrological ostentation. But I can figure out now,
when I remember certain insistent and continued questions that she put
to me, about Edward Ashburnham, that there was another idea in her mind.
And Leonora has told me that, on Florence's dressing-table, beside her
dead body, there had lain a letter to Miss Hurlbird--a letter which
Leonora posted without telling me. I don't know how Florence had time to
write to her aunt; but I can quite understand that she would not like
to go out of the world without making some comments. So I guess Florence
had told Miss Hurlbird a good bit about Edward Ashburnham in a few
scrawled words--and that that was why the old lady did not wish the name
of Hurlbird perpetuated. Perhaps also she thought that I had earned the
Hurlbird money. It meant a pretty tidy lot of discussing, what with the
doctors warning each other about the bad effects of discussions on the
health of the old ladies, and warning me covertly against each other,
and saying that old Mr Hurlbird might have died of heart, after all,
in spite of the diagnosis of his doctor. And the solicitors all had
separate methods of arranging about how the money should be invested and
entrusted and bound. Personally, I wanted to invest the money so that
the interest could be used for the relief of sufferers from the heart.
If old Mr Hurlbird had not died of any defects in that organ he had
considered that it was defective. Moreover, Florence had certainly died
of her heart, as I saw it. And when Miss Florence Hurlbird stood out
that the money ought to go to chest sufferers I was brought to thinking
that there ought to be a chest institution too, and I