/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

>>15103151
Ame was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of her burial was signed by th clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Ina signed it: and Ina's name was good upon 'Change, for anything she chose to put her hand to. Old Ame was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Ame was as dead as a door-nail.

Ina knew she was dead? Of course she did. How could it be otherwise? Ina and she were partners for I don't know how many years. Ina was her sole executor, her sole administrator, her sole assign, her sole residuary legatee, her sole friend and sole mourner. And even Ina was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that she was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Ame's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Ame was dead. Ther must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in her taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon her own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish her son's weak mind.

Ina never painted out Old Ame's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Ina and Ame. The firm was known as Ina and Ame. Sometimes people new to the business called Ina Ina, and sometimes Ame, but she answered to both names: it was all the same to her.