ext thing was to choose the name. I started on the wrong lines. I began
by suggesting names like Porker, Tosh, Bugge, Spiffkins--the obvious
sort. My uncle--

CRAWSHAW (boiling with indignation). How _dare_ you discuss me with your
uncle, Sir! How dare you decide in this cold-blooded way whether I am to
be called--ah--Tosh--or--ah--Porker!

CLIFTON. My uncle wouldn't bear of Tosh or Porker. He wanted a humorous
name--a name he could roll lovingly round his tongue--a name expressing
a sort of humorous contempt--Wurzel-Flummery! I can see now the happy
ruminating smile which came so often on my Uncle Antony's face in those
latter months. He was thinking of his two Wurzel-Flummerys. I remember
him saying once--it was at the Zoo--what a pity it was he hadn't enough
to divide among the whole Cabinet. A whole bunch of Wurzel-Flummerys; it
would have been rather jolly.

CRAWSHAW. You force me to say, sir, that if _that_ was the way you and
your uncle used to talk together at his death can only be described as a
merciful intervention of Providence.

CLIFTON. Oh, but I think he must be enjoying all this somewhere, you
know. I hope he is. He would have loved this morning. It was his one
regret that from the necessities of the case he could not live to
enjoy his own joke; but he had hopes that echoes of it would reach him
wherever he might be. It was with some such idea, I fancy, that toward
the end he became interested in spiritualism.

CRAWSHAW (rising solemnly). Mr. Clifton, I have no interest in
the present whereabouts of your uncle, nor in what means he has of
overhearing a private conversation between you and myself. But if, as
you irreverently suggest, he is listening to us, I should like him to
hear this. That, in my opinion, you are not a qualified solicitor at
all, that you never had an uncle, and that the whole story of the will
and the ridiculous condition attached to it is just the tomfool joke
of a man who, by his own admission, wastes most of his time writing
unsuccessful farces. And I propose--

CLIFTON. Pardon my interrupting. But you said farces. Not farces,
comedies--of a whimsical nature.

CRAWSHAW. Whatever they were, sir, I propose to report the whole matter
to the Law Society. And you know your way out, sir.

CLIFTON. Then I am to understand that you refuse the legacy, Mr.
Crawshaw?

CRAWSHAW (startled). What's that?

CLIFTON. I am to understand that you refuse the fifty thousand pounds?

CRAWS