But a
man can be pretty far gone, you know, without being legally insane,
and old Nutcombe--well, suppose we call him whimsical. He seems to
have zigzagged between the normal and the eccentric.
'His only surviving relatives appear to be a nephew and a niece.
The nephew dropped out of the running two years ago when his aunt,
old Nutcombe's wife, who had divorced old Nutcombe, left him her
money. This seems to have soured the old boy on the nephew, for in
the first of his wills that I've seen--you remember I told you I
had seen three--he leaves the niece the pile and the nephew only
gets twenty pounds. Well, so far there's nothing very eccentric
about old Nutcombe's proceedings. But wait!
'Six months after he had made that will he came in here and made
another. This left twenty pounds to the nephew as before, but
nothing at all to the niece. Why, I don't know. There was nothing
in the will about her having done anything to offend him during
those six months, none of those nasty slams you see in wills about
"I bequeath to my only son John one shilling and sixpence. Now
perhaps he's sorry he married the cook." As far as I can make out
he changed his will just as he did when he left the money to you,
purely through some passing whim. Anyway, he did change it.
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