"You're wrong there, Mr. Eldrick," he said. "But of course, you don't
know. I didn't know myself, nor did Mrs. Mallathorpe, until lately. But
I have a claim--and a good one--to get a business lift from Mrs.
Mallathorpe. I'm a relation."
"What--of the Mallathorpe family?" exclaimed Eldrick, whose legal mind
was at once bitten by notion of kinship and succession, and who knew
that Harper Mallathorpe was supposed to have no male relatives at all,
of any degree. "You don't mean it?"
"No!--but of hers, Mrs. Mallathorpe," answered Pratt. "My mother was her
cousin. I found that out by mere chance, and when I'd found it, I worked
out the facts from our parish church register. They're all here--fairly
copied--Mrs. Mallathorpe has seen them. So I have some claim--even if
it's only that of a poor relation."
Eldrick took the sheets of foolscap which Pratt handed to him, and
looked them over with interest and curiosity. He was something of an
expert in such matters, and had helped to edit a print more than once of
the local parish registers. He soon saw from a hasty examination of the
various entries of marriages and births that Pratt was quite right in
what he said.
"I call it a poor--and a mean--game," remarked Pratt, while his old
master was thus occupied, "a very mean game indeed, of well-to-do folk
like Mr. Collingwood and Mr.
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