It was very damp and musty. In several places the paper hung in great
strips from the walls, and the oddest part of all was that every article
of furniture in the room, and even the hearthrug, was covered with
sheets of newspaper pinned over to preserve it. I sat in the corner of a
sofa, where I could read the trial of a man who murdered somebody
twenty-five years before, but I never got to the end of it, for it went
on behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all the
time and hid it. Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with his
head on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names were
read out in the will. Even then he only half awoke, and the fat man
drove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in Jem's
ear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having saved
the life of his cat.
I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections of
the old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; and
the lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times over
that we really had been invited to the funeral.
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