--I mean the interview."
"Not at all, I thank you," said Wilding. "What was I going to--"
"Don't excite yourself, Mr. Wilding," urged the lawyer.
"No; I _wasn't_ going to," said the wine-merchant. "Mr. Bintrey and
George Vendale, would you have any hesitation or objection to become my
joint trustees and executors, or can you at once consent?"
"_I_ consent," replied George Vendale, readily.
"_I_ consent," said Bintrey, not so readily.
"Thank you both. Mr. Bintrey, my instructions for my last will and
testament are short and plain. Perhaps you will now have the goodness to
take them down. I leave the whole of my real and personal estate,
without any exception or reservation whatsoever, to you two, my joint
trustees and executors, in trust to pay over the whole to the true Walter
Wilding, if he shall be found and identified within two years after the
day of my death. Failing that, in trust to you two to pay over the whole
as a benefaction and legacy to the Foundling Hospital."
"Those are all your instructions, are they, Mr. Wilding?" demanded
Bintrey, after a blank silence, during which nobody had looked at
anybody.
"The whole."
"And as to those instructions, you have absolutely made up your mind, Mr.
Wilding?"
"Absolutely, decidedly, finally."
"It only remains," said the lawyer, with one shrug of his shoulders, "to
get them into technical and binding form, and to execute and attest. Now,
does that press? Is there any hurry about it? You are not going to die
yet, sir.
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