“Lork, Mr. Dicky!” she said, when I came in. “Is the old gentleman a friend of yours? I’m sure I’d have give him every attention if I’d known.”
She was glancing fitfully, all the time she spoke, at a little lozenge of looking-glass which stood on the bar rack.
“Whatever you could have spared from that, Tilly?” I said. “I’m sure I’m much obliged to you.”
“O, get along!” she protested. “You’re always poking your fun at me!” And I made my way upstairs, as directed, to number seven.
I found Joshua not yet out of bed when I entered to his summons. He sat up to greet me, like Lazarus new-risen—a wasted corpse-like little figure, white and grim and unshorn. But his face lighted rapturously at sight of me.
“It was no dream, then!” he said, and lay back again, with a very gentle expression. I came and stood over him, and he nodded to me.
“Richard, I shall lie abed to-day. This passion of luxury after the toil! Most restful, most wonderful! Yet the sickness is not out of my bones.”
“You will do very well,” I said. “When you are rested, we must show you all there is of the place—the local lions, you know. To-night it is a Feast of Lanterns—rather fun. Do you think you could manage it?” And between question and answer he learned all about Mr. Sant, and Harry, and what remained untold of our simple history. It might have been Hume to him, so profound an attention he gave to it.
“I shall like that Harry,” he said at the end; “and the sensible clergyman. Yes, I will come to the Feast, if you can find me a lantern.”
After arranging to fetch him at a given hour, I left him to his trance of rest. He told me no more of his story. I had hardly expected he would; yet I retreated in an itch of half-injured excitement. Ah! if I could have foreseen under what circumstances the revelation was to come to me, I would have sworn a compact of eternal silence with him, and baffled Fate.