She dried her hands, put them in the coat pockets and started up the lane to the centre of the village. On the way she met Sim Jenkins, and told him sharply that if he didn’t pay the interest on his mortgage more promptly she would demand the principal. Sim looked frightened. He knew that Keturah would not hesitate to foreclose.
[44]At the principal street intersection of Blue Port stood the postoffice and the few clustered shops. There was one two-story structure which constituted Blue Port’s only office building. On the ground floor were a real estate agent, a milliner, and a store where cigars and soft drinks, magazines and writing paper could be bought. Up the flight of stairs were a doctor’s office and the places of business of Blue Port’s lawyers. Blue Port had one saloon, two churches, and three lawyers, one of whom was a justice of the peace. To this functionary, Judge Hollaby, Miss Smiley made her way.
The Judge was sitting in his office with his feet on the desk and his hat on his head, reading Seneca on old age. He had not enjoyed a plate of oysters the evening before with his usual relish, and this had profoundly depressed him. He was therefore reading; Judge Hollaby found in reading the consolation that some men find in drink, although he was by no means a teetotaler.
Miss Smiley opened the door without knocking. As she entered rapidly Judge Hollaby put down his feet with an almost youthful spryness, and hastily removed his hat. His visitor, to his pain, picked up the half-smoked cigar that lay extinguished on a corner of his desk and threw it in the cuspidor. The name of it was La Coloratura and it had cost 13 cents straight.
Judge Hollaby knew better than to waste breath in[45] formal greetings. Keturah Smiley seated herself and said:
“Don’t beat around the bush but tell me in words I understand just the disposition of the property my aunt left me.”
The lawyer felt momentarily flurried. He really had forgotten the provisions of old Keturah Hawkins’s will. However, it would not do to say so—wouldn’t do at all.
“Entailed, Miss Smiley, entailed,” he said with what he intended to be a retrospective and thoughtful air. To his client it seemed merely absent-minded.
“Please put your mind on this, Judge Hollaby!” she commanded in a tone that reminded the lawyer of several schoolma’ams rolled into one. “I ask you to use plain words and you start off by using a word like ‘entailed’! Explain yourself. What is entail?”
The Judge was very uncomfortable. He made the absurd mistake of trying to impress his visitor.
“Under entail,” he began to explain, “an estate is so bequeathed that the inheritors cannot bequeath it at their pleasure; the fee is abridged and curtailed——”
An impatient sound escaped Miss Smiley.
“Curtail, if you please,” she said, “your fine-sounding description. As I understand the matter, my aunt left me all her property in and for my lifetime. I am to have the free use of it. I can throw it all in the bay if I like——”
“Except the real estate,” interjected the Judge.
[46]“I daresay I could dam Hawkins creek and flood that,” retorted Keturah, then went on: “I can use every cent of it, spend it, waste it; and if there is nothing left, no one will inherit it.”
“Naturally not,” assented Judge Hollaby.
“Unnaturally,” said his client, sharply. “It would be an unnatural thing to do.”
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