("He
_is_ in a temper!" was my mental comment.) After this my attention was
distracted for a second or two by seeing what I thought was a bit of
toffy left in the tin, and biting it and finding it was a piece of
sheet-glue. I had not spit out all the disgust of it, when Charlie
called me in low, awe-struck tones: "Jack! come here. Quick!"
I ran to him. The drawer was open, but it seemed to have another drawer
inside it, a long, narrow, shallow one.
"I hit the back, and this sprang out," said Charlie. "It's a secret
drawer--and look!"
I did look. The secret drawer was closely packed with rolls of thin
leaflets, which we were old enough to recognize as bank-notes, and with
little bags of wash-leather; and when Charlie opened the little bags
they were filled with gold.
There was a paper with the money, written by the old miser, to say that
it was a codicil to his will, and that the money was all for Mrs. Wood.
Why he had not left it to her in the will itself seemed very puzzling,
but his lawyer (whom the Woods consulted about it) said that he always
did things in a very eccentric way, but generally for some sort of
reason, even if it were rather a freaky one, and that perhaps he thought
that the relations would be less spiteful at first if they did not know
about the money, and that Mrs.
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