But Solly was not allowed to answer. Miss Puss Pottinger, great friend and unappeased mourner of the deceased, popped up beside him.

“It is as dear Louisa would have wished it to be,” she said, in an aggressive but unsteady voice. “Thursday was always her At Home day, you know, Mr Dean.”

“First Thursdays, I thought,” said the Dean; “this is a third Thursday.”

“Be it what it may,” said Miss Puss, losing control of face and voice, “I shall think of this as dear Louisa’s—last—At Home.”

“I’m very sorry,” said the Dean. “I had not meant to distress you. Will you accept a sip—?” He held out his glass.

Miss Pottinger wrestled with herself, and spoke in a whisper. “No,” said she. “Sherry. I think I could take a little sherry.”

The Dean bore her away, and she was shortly seen sipping a glass of dark brown sherry in which Cobbler, unseen, had put a generous dollop of brandy.

Solly was at once engaged in conversation by his Uncle George Hansen and Uncle George’s wife. This lady was an American, and as she had lived in Canada a mere thirty-five years, still found the local customs curious, and never failed to say so.

“This seems to me more like England than at home,” she said now.

“Mother was very conservative,” said Solly.

“The whole of Salterton is very conservative,” said Uncle George; “I just met old Puss Pottinger mumbling about At Homes; thought she was dead years ago. This must.be one of the last places in the British Empire where anybody has an At Home day.”

“Mother was certainly one of the last in Salterton to have one,” said Solly.

“Aha? Well, this is a nice old house. You and your wife going to keep it up?”

“I haven’t had time to think about that yet.”

“No, I suppose not. But of course you’ll be pretty well fixed, now?”

“I really don’t know, sir.”

“Sure to be. Your mother was a rich woman. You’ll get everything. She certainly won’t leave anything to me; I know that. Ha ha! She was a wonder with money, even as a girl. ‘Louie, you’re tighter than the bark to a tree,’ I used to say to her. Did your father leave much?”

“He died very suddenly, you know, sir. His will was an old one, made before I was born. Everything went to mother, of course.”

“Aha? Well, it all comes to the same thing now, eh?”

“Solly, do you realize I’d never met your wife until this afternoon?” said Uncle George’s wife. “Louisa never breathed a word about your marriage until she wrote to us weeks afterward. The girl was a Catholic, wasn’t she?”

“No, Aunt Gussie. Her mother was a Catholic, but Veronica was brought up a freethinker by her father. Mother and her father had never agreed, and I’m afraid my marriage was rather a shock to her. I’ll get Veronica now.”

“Why do you keep calling her Veronica?” said Uncle George. “Louie wrote that her name was Pearl.”

“It still is,” said Solly. “But it is also Veronica, and that is what she likes me to call her. Her father is Professor Vambrace, you know.”

“Oh God, that old bastard,” said Uncle George, and was kicked on the ankle by his wife. “Gussie, what are you kicking me for?”

At this moment a Hansen cousin, leaning on a stick, approached and interrupted.

“Let’s see, George, now Louisa’s gone you’re the oldest Hansen stock, aren’t you?”

“I’m sixty-nine,” said Uncle George; “you’re older than that, surely, Jim?”

“Sixty-eight,” said Jim, with a smirk.

“You look older,” said Uncle George, unpleasantly.

“You would, too, if you’d been where I was on the Somme,” said Cousin Jim, with the conscious virtue of one who has earned the right to be nasty on the field of battle.

“You people certainly like it hot in Canada,” said Aunt Gussie. And she was justified, for the steam heat and three open fires had made the crowded rooms oppressive.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Solly and crept away. He ran upstairs and sought refuge in the one place he could think of which might be inviolable by his mother’s relatives. As he entered his bathroom from his dressing room his wife slipped furtively in from the bedroom. They locked both doors and sat down to rest on the edge of the tub.

“They’re beginning to fight about who’s the oldest stock,” said Solly.

“I’ve met rather too many people who’ve hinted that our marriage killed your mother,” said Veronica. “I thought a breather would do me good.”

“Mother must have written fifty letters about that.”

“Don’t worry about it now, Solly.”

“How is Humphrey doing?”

“I haven’t heard any complaints. Do people always soak like this at funerals?”

“How should I know? I’ve never given a funeral tea before.”

When Solly and his wife went downstairs again they found that most of the guests had turned their attention from drink to food, save for a half-dozen diehards who hung around the bar. The mourners were, in the main, elderly people who were unaccustomed to fresh air in the afternoon, and the visit to the cemetery had given them an appetite. The caterer directed operations from the kitchen, and his four waitresses hurried to and fro with laden platters. Ethel and Doris, ranking as mourners, pretended to be passing food, but were in reality engaged in long and regretful conversations with family friends, one or two of whom were unethically sounding them out about the chances of their changing employment, now that Mrs Bridgetower was gone. (After all, what would a young man with an able-bodied wife want with two servants?) Miss Puss had been expected to pour the tea, a position of special honour, but she gave it up after overfilling three cups in succession, and seemed to be utterly unnerved; little Mrs Knapp took on this demanding job, and was relieved after a hundred cups or so by Mrs Swithin Shillito. The fake beams of the dining-room ceiling seemed lower and more oppressive than ever as the mourners crowded themselves into the room, consuming ham, turkey, sandwiches, cheese, Christmas cake and tartlets with increasing gusto. Those who were wedged near the table obligingly passed plates of food over the heads of the crowd to others who could not get near the supplies. The respectful hush had completely vanished, laughter and even guffaws were heard, and if it had not been a funeral tea the party would have been called a rousing success.

The mourners had returned from the graveyard at four o’clock, and it was six before any of them thought of going home. It was the general stirring of the Montreal Hansens, who had a train to catch, which finally broke up the party.

“Good-bye, Solly, and a Merry Christmas!” roared Uncle George, who had returned to the bar immediately after finishing a hearty tea. His wife kicked him on the ankle again, and he straightened his face. “Well, as merry as possible under the circumstances,” he added, and plunged into the scramble for rubbers which was going on in the hall. Cousin Jim was sitting on the stairs, while a small, patient wife struggled to put on and zip up his overshoes. “Take care of my bad leg,” he said, in a testy voice, to anyone who came near. It was some time before all the Hansens had gone. Several of them trailed back into the drawing-room, in full outdoor kit, to wring Solly’s hand, or to kiss him on the cheek. But at last they went, and the Saltertonians began to struggle for coats and overshoes.

Mr Matthew Snelgrove, solicitor and long-time friend of Mrs Bridgetower, approached Solly conspiratorially. He was a tall old man, stiff and crane-like, with beetling brows.

“Will tomorrow, at three o’clock, suit you?” he said.

“For what, Mr Snelgrove?”

“The will,” said Mr Snelgrove. “We must read and discuss the will.”

“But is that necessary? I thought nobody read wills now. Can’t we meet at your office some day next week and discuss it?”

“I think that your Mother would have wished her will to be read in the presence of all her executors.”