I was down in my chair, flabby and gasping.
“But what brought him to me?” I groaned.
“Train, sir,” answered the man; “plenty of ’em, and easy to catch from the suburbs. Why he come on here? Why, his offices in the old days was in Furnival’s; it were that give us the clue. I suppose, now” (he took off his cap, took a red handkerchief from it, thoughtfully mopped his forehead, and returned the bandana to its nest), “I suppose, now, he’s been a-gammoning of you pretty high with his insurances? His fust principle in life was always to play upon fools.”
AN ABSENT VICAR
“Exactly,” said the Reverend Septimus Prior; “the exchange was the most fortuitous, not to say the most fortunate” (he gave a little giggle and bow) “possible. Your uncle saw my advertisement, answered it, and for a brief period he goes to my cure, and I come to his.”
“Well, if you feel certain,” said Miss Robin, regretfully resting in her lap the novel she was reading.
Mr. Prior sipped his tea and nibbled his rusk. In the intervals between, he would occasionally glance at the portrait of a scholarly cleric, with a thin grim mouth and glassy eyes, which bantered him from the wall opposite.
“Your uncle—Mr. Fearful?” he had once ventured to ask; and the niece had answered, “Yes. It is very like him.”
Now he paused, with his cup half-way to his mouth.
“I beg your pardon?” he exclaimed.