"Damned if I do," answered Nicky-Nan curtly. "But I'd like to know who wrote it."
"It don't stand with Government reggilations, as I read 'em," said Lippity-Libby, "for a postman to be tellin' who wrote every 'nonymous letter he carries. . . . Well, I be wastin' time; but if you'll take my advice, Mr Nanjivell, and it isn' too late, you'll marry a woman. She'll probably increase your comfort, and—I don't care who she is— she'll work out another woman that writes 'nonymous. Like a stoat in a burrow she will, specially if she happens to take in washin' same as my lost Sarah did. She was shown a 'nonymous letter with 'Only charitable to warn' in it. Dang me, if she didn' go straight an' turn up a complaint about 'One chemise torn in wash,' an' showed me how, though sloped different ways, the letters were alike, twiddles an' all, to the very daps. I wouldn' believe it at the time, the party bein' a female in good position. But my wife was certain of it, an' all the more because she never allowed to her last breath that the woman's shimmy had been torn at all. Well, so long!"
Nicky-Nan carried the letter indoors to his small, dark sitting-room, and there spelled it through painfully, holding the paper close up to the window-pane. It ran:—
Sunday, 2/8/14.
Mr N. Nanjivell.
Sir,—As an inhabitant of Polpier, born in the town and anxious for its good name, besides being a ratepayer and one that pays taxes to His Majesty, I was naterally concerned to-day at your not taking your place along with the other men that went off to fight for their country. I am given to understand that you were served with a paper, same as the rest, and the Customs Officer was put out by your not going. I don't wonder at it. Such want of pluck.
Its no good your saying you are not Abel. If you are Abel to be a Reservist and draw pay, you are Abel to Fight thats how I look at it. I would let you to know the Public doesnt pay money for gamey legs that go about taking all they can get until the Pinch comes.
Theres a good many things want looking into in Polpier, It has reached me that until the present sistem came in and put a stop to it you drew pay for years for drills that you never atended.
This is a time when as Lord Nelson said England expects every
Man to Do his Duty. I think so bad of your case that I am
writing by same post to the Custom House at Troy about it.
So I warn you as
A Well-Wisher.
Nicky-Nan read this amiable missive through, and re-read it almost to the end before realising the menace of it. At the first perusal his mind was engaged with the mechanical task of deciphering the script and with speculating on its authorship. . . . He came to the end with no full grasp of the purport.
His wits were dulled, too, being preoccupied—in spite of Lippity-Libby—with suspicions of Mr Pamphlett. He recognised the hand of an enemy; and though conscious of possessing few friends in the world (none, maybe—he did not care how many or how few, anyway), he was aware of one only enemy—Pamphlett. He held this tenement which Pamphlett openly coveted: but what besides had he that any one could envy? Who else could wish him worse off than he was? His broken past, his present poverty and daily mental anguish, his future sans hope—any one who wanted these might take 'em and welcome!