Page:JM Barrie--My lady nicotine.djvu/211

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PETTIGREW'S DREAM.
205

reopened it to ask if he felt unwell. He answered in the negative, and she left him. The last person to see Mr. Pettigrew alive was Eliza Day, the housemaid. She took a letter to him between twelve and one o'clock. Usually he disliked being disturbed at his writing; but this time, in answer to her knock, he cried eagerly, "Come in!" When she entered he insisted on her taking a chair, and asked her how all her people were, and if there was anything he could do for them. Several times she rose to leave, but he would not allow her to do so. Eliza mentioned this in the kitchen when she returned to it. Her master was naturally a reserved man who seldom spoke to his servants, which rendered his behavior on this occasion the more remarkable.

As announced in the evening papers yesterday, the servant sent to the study at half-past one to see why Mr. Pettigrew was not coming to lunch, found him lifeless on the floor. The knife clutched in his hand showed that he had done the fatal deed himself; and Dr. Southwick, of Hyde Park, who was on the spot within ten minutes of the painful discovery, is of opinion that life had been extinct for about half an hour. The body was lying among Jubilee odes. On the table were a dozen or more sheets of "copy," which, though only spoiled pages, showed that the deceased had not succumbed without a struggle. On one he had begun, "Fifty years