"Nash!" I called out, running after them. "Nash, where have you been all this time? And why haven't you and Mrs. Nash been to see me?"
"We have been doing pretty much the same as usual, sir," he replied stiffly; "and thank you for asking." Then touching his ragged cap, he said brusquely, "Good day, sir," and, pushing the perambulator before him, passed along.
But I was not thus easily to be shaken off. At first he stood very much on his dignity, answering my questions, in regard to himself and his doings, with civil but manifest unwillingness, but at last I contrived—and then only with difficulty—to discover wherein I had offended.
On the last occasion, when they had visited me, I had said to him, as he was passing out: "Well, good-bye, Nash. Mind, if ever you get into trouble, be sure to come or to send to me, and I'll do my best to get you out."
By "trouble" I had meant illness, or the inability to scrape together the small sum they paid as rent for the miserable hovel in which they lived.
But in George Nash's world "trouble"—so I learned for the first time—has only one meaning when applied to a man (the word is used in a different sense in regard to a woman), and that meaning—jail.
"I don't see why you should have thought that of us, sir," Nash said with quiet dignity. "Poor we may be, but at least we've managed to keep honest. And the inside of a prison we're never likely to see. We thank you kindly for what you've done for us, sir, the missis and me, but if you think as we're that sort, well, sir, we've made a mistake about you, and you've made a mistake about us, and we wish you good-day."
Turning doggedly to the perambulator, he touched his hat and passed on.
"Why, my dear fellow," I said hotly, following him, and taking him by the hand, "such a thought never entered my head. I'd leave you—and for the matter of that I have left you or your wife—in my room alone with every farthing I possess lying about openly, and never even dream of counting it, or of thinking of it at all.
"Well," I went on, when I had at last persuaded him that he had done me an injustice, "well, and what on earth is the meaning of Mrs. Nash being cooped up in this perambulator? She looks very white and thin. I do hope she isn't ill."