"No, I guess not. The fact is—"
"Excuse me; but would you mind taking your hands out of your pockets?"
"Oh, come! Why?" But none the less Mr. Banner removed them.
"Thank you. You were saying?"
"Well, I guess, between you and me"—Mr. Banner's hands were slipping to his pockets again but he checked the motion and rested a palm nonchalantly on either hip—"the old man was a bit too God-fearing to sign to it."
"You mean," the Collector asked slowly, "that he is not, in fact, unwell, but has asked you to convey an untruth?"
"You've a downright way of putting it—er—sir" Mr. Banner confessed; "but you get near enough, I shouldn't wonder. You see, the old—the Surveyor is strict upon Lord's Day Observance."
The Collector bent his brows slightly while he smoothed Bayard's mane. Of a sudden the small scene by the Church porch recurred to him. "Stay," he said. "I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wapshott, but may I attempt to describe him to you? He is, perhaps, a gentleman of somewhat stunted growth, but of full habit, and somewhat noticeably red between the ear and the neck-stock?"
"That hits him."
"—with a wife inclining to portliness and six grown daughters, taller than their parents and not precisely in their first bloom. I speak," added the Collector, still eyeing his victim, "as to a man of the world."