“Hush—and don’t be a heathen—run and see who is coming in,” said Mrs. Morpher, as the sound of footsteps was heard in the passage.
The door opened and McSnagley entered.
“Why, bless my soul—how do you do?” said Mrs. Morpher, with genteel astonishment. “Quite a stranger, I declare.”
This was a polite fiction. M’liss knew the fact to be that Mrs. Morpher was reputed to “set the best table” in Smith’s Pocket, and McSnagley always called in on Sunday evenings at supper to discuss the current gossip, and “nag” M’liss with selected texts. The verbal McSnagley as usual couldn’t stop a moment—and just dropped in “in passin’.” The actual McSnagley deposited his hat in the corner, and placed himself, in the flesh, on a chair by the table.
“And how’s Brother James, and the fammerly?”
“They’re all well—except ‘Risty;’ he’s off again,—as if my life weren’t already pestered out with one child,” and Mrs. Morpher glanced significantly at M’liss.
“Ah, well, we all of us have our trials,” said McSnagley. “I’ve been ailin’ again. That ager must be in my bones still. I’ve been rather onsettled myself to-day.”
There was the appearance of truth in this statement; Mr. McSnagley’s voice had a hollow resonant sound, and his eyes were nervous and fidgety. He had an odd trick, too, of occasionally stopping in the middle of a sentence, and listening as though he heard some distant sound. These things, which Mrs. Morpher recalled afterwards, did not, in the undercurrent of uneasiness about Aristides which she felt the whole of that evening, so particularly attract her notice.
“I know something,” said Lycurgus, during one of these pauses, from the retirement of his corner.
“If you dare to—Kerg!” said M’liss.