“Oh, he’s better than you suppose him. He wanted a little assistance—that’s all.”
“Why, he’s quite a swell to what he was the other day. I hardly knew him when I opened the door, he looked so respectable. But he has such odd ways, and is so familiar—too familiar by half, to my thinking.”
Mrs. Bourne laughed. It was the first time she had done so for several days.
“Familiar is he, Amy?”
“Well, marm, I think so; not rude, you know, but he makes use of such odd words, and has such an easy, confident manner with him. Oh, he’s a card in his way—there’s no doubt about that.”
“Yes, he is a character; but there is no occasion for you to mention to the doctor that he’s been here.”
“Me, marm? Lord bless me, no—I wouldn’t think of doing such a thing.”
“Because, you see, he’s a man I knew when little more than a child. He appears to be so strangely altered since those days that I can hardly believe him to be the same person. He’s evidently quite a lost man; but this is only as I guess, for I know nothing of his mode of life, which, however, I fear, is not altogether a respectable one.”
“I wonder what the doctor wanted him here for. He wouldn’t have encouraged him unless he had some motive.”
“That’s not your business—neither is it mine,” observed Mrs. Bourne, reprovingly.