“He do seem an ordinary kind of a man,” Thomas Pank, the innkeeper observed critically.
“A sportsman, maybe,” Mr. Craske, the grocer, suggested, appreciating the costume of the approaching figure.
Rawson, the butler from the Hall, shrugged his shoulders doubtfully. Every one listened for his comment with interest. He was admitted to be a man of the world and a person of considerable experience.
“I should say not,” he decided. “He is wearing the clothes of a country gentleman, but to my mind he wears them as though he weren’t used to them.”
The only stranger in the neighbourhood, a young man of sandy complexion, of silent habits, and with rather sleepy eyes, who had lodgings in the farmhouse close by and was understood to be a schoolmaster taking a prolonged vacation, set down his glass and intervened. He, too, was watching the newcomer with some interest.
“He is asking for some shooting, Farmer Kershaw told me.”
“That don’t go to prove nothing,” the innkeeper declared. “There’s many as shoots now out from Norwich and the big towns that don’t know one end of the gun from the other. What I say is that it’s a queer thing that a man with no friends around, a solitary man too, by all accounts, should come and settle in a place like this, and in that particular house too. Mysterious, I call it!”
“I am of the same opinion,” Rawson agreed.
“Hold on, you chaps!” the innkeeper enjoined, in a tone of some excitement. “He’s coming right in here!”
The pseudo-schoolmaster, whose name was understood to be Fielding, was the only one of the little company who did not show signs of embarrassment as the latch of the door was lifted, the door itself pushed open, and the subject of their conversation made his appearance. The grocer had plunged rather too abruptly into the discussion of some local topic with the butler, and the innkeeper was too taken aback to conceal his astonishment at this unexpected visit. Mr. Johnson, however, was one of those people who carry with them a composing influence and the slight awkwardness was of very short duration.