And if Mrs. Fred had not been "one of the Fuller heirs," Saint X would
have made her feel its displeasure, instead of merely gossiping and
threatening.

"I'm going the round of the invalids to-day," began Henrietta, after she
had got through the formula of sick-room conversation. "I've just come
from old John Skeffington. I found all the family in the depths. He
fooled 'em again last night."

Hiram smiled. All Saint X knew what it meant for old Skeffington to "fool
'em again." He had been dying for three years. At the first news that he
was seized of a mortal illness his near relations, who had been driven
from him by his temper and his parsimony, gathered under his roof from
far and near, each group hoping to induce him to make a will in its
favor. He lingered on, and so did they--watching each other, trying to
outdo each other in complaisance to the humors of the old miser. And he
got a new grip on life through his pleasure in tyrannizing over them and
in putting them to great expense in keeping up his house. He favored
first one group, then another, taking fagots from fires of hope burning
too high to rekindle fires about to expire.

"How is he?" asked Hiram.

"_They_ say he can't last till fall," replied Henrietta; "but he'll last
another winter, maybe ten. He's having more and more fun all the time. He
has made them bring an anvil and hammer to his bedside, and whenever he
happens to be sleeping badly--and that's pretty often--he bangs on the
anvil until the last one of his relations has got up and come in; then,
maybe he'll set 'em all to work mending his fishing tackle--right in the
dead of night."