“You have our great grandmother’s pair of silk stockings here in No. 2, I know,” said Philip. “I remember your sending for them, you wanted to show them to your sister-in-law when she was with you.”
“Umph.”
“Really, brother, you might answer me.”
“I do not want to part with the stockings.”
“But,” said Phil, “I do not desire to yield them up.”
“Why not? They are no good to you.”
“Of what possible use can they be to you?”
“They are of interest to my womankind.”
“But they are heirlooms in our family, and should be in my hands, as the eldest, and head of the Heckmondwyke family.”
“Nonsense. You are a bachelor.”
“Well—and you have no son.”
“If you had them,” said Hezekiah, “no one would see them. You would keep them locked up, and they might as well be non-existent.”
“I object to their being pawed by every Jack and Tom, and Jill and Jenny.”
“I do not admit into my social circle Jacks and Toms, and Jills and Jennys,” said Hezekiah sternly; “will you leave me?”
“I can hardly go till something is settled about those stockings.”
“I do not want to part with them.”
“Hezekiah,” said Philip raising himself to his full height, and speaking with constrained indignation, “I insist on the surrender of those stockings.”
“What would you have?” asked Hezekiah sarcastically. “Divide the stockings?”
“Nonsense, how could they be divided and be a pair?”
“Oh,” sneered the younger, “with a pair of shears you could cut them across, and you take the feet and I the rest.”
“Or you take one and I the other,” added Philip. “No, I will consent to no such compromise. If I did, I should rightly forfeit my claim to them, like the woman before the throne of judgment of Solomon.”
“I will not give them up. It is absurd of you to want them. They will descend from me to my daughter, who is a Penelope Lætitia like her great-grandmother.”
“Is that your deliberate answer?”
“It is.”
“Then you are fraudulent.”
“You are grasping, avaricious.”
“There is the latch-key. This question must be settled before we meet again—amicably.”
Hezekiah rang the bell. “Show out Mr. Philip,” he said to the servant.
III.
“It really is absurd,” said Mrs. Heckmondwyke, “really too childish to quarrel about a pair of stockings. Let Philip have them.”
“My dear Bessie,” answered Hezekiah, “you look on this matter from a Scholey point of view”—Mrs. Heckmondwyke had been a Miss Scholey—“and not from that commanding platform whence we who are the descendants and representatives of the Holroyds contemplate these stockings. As a Lee I am resolved to retain them. Besides—”
“My dear Hez, why quarrel about them?”
“I do not quarrel, it is Philip who quarrels with me. He is exacting, and demands these stockings as a right.”
“Perhaps he has a right to them.”
“Not at all. Possession is nine points of the law. Besides, he has insulted me.”
“Was either of you constituted residuary legatee by the will? If so, that should decide the matter.”
“Neither was. Everything was left to us equally, except such things as we chose to divide.”
“Then divide the stockings.”
“We neither of us choose to do this. A pair constitutes a complete and perfect article. Neither Philip nor I would allow of this separation into individual stockings. They must go together and so constitute a pair. If neither will hear of the separation, then such an arrangement as you propose is inadmissible.”
A few days after this Hezekiah received the following letter from his brother—