CHAPTER XX.
"Marvell, who had both pleasure and success, who must have enjoyed life if ever man did, ...

found his happiness in the garden where he was."-- From an article in _The Times Literary Supplement._ Mrs.M'Cosh remained extremely sceptical about the reality of the fortune until the lawyer came from London, "yin's errand to see Miss Jean," as she explained importantly to Miss Bathgate, and he was such an eminently solid, safe-looking man that her doubts vanished.
"I wud say he wis an elder in the kirk, if they've onything as respectable as an elder in England," was her summing up of the lawyer.
Mr.Dickson (of Dickson, Staines, & Dickson), though a lawyer, was a human being, and was able to meet Jean with sympathy and understanding when she tried to explain to him her wishes.
First of all, she was very anxious to know if Mr.Dickson thought it quite fair that she should have the money.

Was he _quite_ sure that there were no relations, no one who had a real claim?
Mr.Dickson explained to her what a singularly lonely, self-sufficing man Peter Reid had been, a man without friends, almost without interests--except the piling up of money.
"I don't say he was unhappy; I believe he was very content, absolutely absorbed in his game of money-making.

But when he couldn't ignore any longer the fact that there was something wrong with his health, and went to the specialist and was told to give up work at once, he was completely bowled over.

Life held nothing more for him.