"He was eccentric, my dear sir, very eccentric; but eccentricity is not insanity, and you will find that the will will stand." Jem and I were sitting on an old garden-seat, but the men had talked without paying any attention to us.

At this moment Jem, who had left me a minute or two before, came running back and said: "Jack! Do come and look in at the parlour window.

That man with the white face is peeping everywhere, and under all the newspapers, and he's made himself so dusty! It's such fun!" Too happy at the prospect of anything in the shape of fun, I followed Jem on tiptoe, and when we stood by the open window with our hands over our mouths to keep us from laughing, the pale-faced man was just struggling with the inside lids of an old japanned tea-caddy.
He did not see us, he was too busy, and he did not hear us, for he was talking to himself, and we heard him say, "Everything of every sort therein contained." I suppose the lawyer was right, and that the fat man was convinced of it, for neither he nor any one else disputed the old miser's will.

Jem and I each opened an account in the Savings Bank, and Mrs.Wood came into possession of the place.
Public opinion went up and down a good deal about the old miser still.

When it leaked out that he had worded the invitation to his funeral to the effect that, being quite unable to tolerate the follies of his fellow-creatures, and the antics and absurdities which were necessary to entertain them, he had much pleasure in welcoming his neighbours to a feast, at which he could not reasonably be expected to preside--everybody who heard it agreed that he must have been mad.
But it was a long sentence to remember, and not a very easy one to understand, and those who saw the plumes and the procession, and those who had a talk with the undertaker, and those who got a yard more than usual of such very good black silk, and those who were able to remember what they had had for dinner, were all charitably inclined to believe that the old man's heart had not been far from being in the right place, at whatever angle his head had been set on.
And then by degrees curiosity moved to Mrs.Wood.Who was she?
What was she like?
What was she to the miser?
Would she live at the farm?
To some of these questions the carrier, who was the first to see her, replied.