"Your father left each of you a considerable sum," said lawyer Haggett. "His fortune amounts to 99 million dollars. He divided it among the four of you according to the terms in this poem."
"A poem!" exclaimed Betty. "I thought we came to hear the will."
"The will is a poem," the lawyer explained.
"Ish 'at legal?" asked Sam, his words slurred.
"I don't even know why I'm here," said Colette a dark-haired girl of 17 who looked 27.
"Ha!" laughed Nick. "Shoot, I just stopped by to see if I could help out."
"Now, now," said the lawyer. "The poem explains everything." Here is the poem he read:
On each of you I now bestow
The portions listed here below
To Tom, firstborn, the greatest share:
One half of all my fortune there.
To Betty goes a fourth at least;
She's happy now that I'm deceased.
To Sam, who always drank my gin,
I give a fifth with which to sin.
And lastly to my dear Colette,
A twenty-fifth is all you get.
If you fight over the disparity,
Then everything will go to charity.
To neighbor Nick I've given nought,
But send him home with what he brought.
"I've drawn up the amounts based on the portions assigned in the will, said Haggett. "Tom will get $49,500,000. Betty gets $24,750,000. Sam has $19,200,000 coming to him, and Colette will have $3,960,000."
"Wait a minute," said Sam, sounding not at all drunk. "That's only $97,410,000. What happens to the other $1,590,000?" He looked suspiciously at the lawyer.
"Hey, Sam's right," said Tom. "Just what's going on here?"
"Hang on," said Nick. "Mr Haggett is just doing his job. You're forgetting the last two lines of the poem. I've got something here that I think will make everything come out all right.
What did neighor Nick bring? How did it make everything come out all right?
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