“Mind, Mr. Alan, and why should I mind, me being all straight and above the sky-line, respectable as my parents were before me, as anyone who can read is able to see on their tombstones in the right-hand corner of the churchyard looking from the porch. Ask me what you like, sir, whether it means weddings or funerals, or all that goes between in——”
“I simply wish to know if during the last year you have seen an Indian gentleman in the village,” interrupted Fuller again, and with a look at Marie to show that he desired to conduct the conversation himself.
“Well, I never, and to think as you didn’t hear of him, stopping here as he was in July last for one night, and saying as the rice he ate was boiled in a way he admired.”
“Oh, so there was an Indian here?”
Mrs. Verwin nodded and placed her stout arms akimbo, with curiosity in her snapping black eyes.
“Quite the gentleman he was, though I hope there’s nothing wrong with him, meaning courts and docks and lawyers, as is all the sons of Old Nick, asking your pardon, Mr. Alan, for saying so, and yours, miss, for talking about him, as shouldn’t be spoke of, nohow. Now if——”
“There’s nothing wrong about him,” said Alan, again stopping the flow of the landlady’s conversation, or rather monologue; “but I happened to meet him at Miss Grison’s boarding-house in London and——”
“Lor’ sir,” said Mrs. Verwin again, and taking her turn to interrupt, “may I never speak another word, if she don’t owe me a good turn for having told him to go there, where he’d be comfortable, though I never could see as Miss Grison, and Louisa’s her name, was much of a housekeeper.”
“You told Mr. Bakche to go,” said Alan, remembering how the Indian had mentioned to Miss Grison that someone in Ceylon had sent him to Thimble Square, “and why?”
“Batch. Yes sir, Batch was the name, and he was a very dark gentleman with eyes like gimblets for boring a person through and through, haughty like and grand in his manners, speaking English like a native in spite of his having been reared in a country where they chatter French and German, the last a language I never could abide, since a waiter of that sort went away when the house was full, and I needed all the hands I’d got besides a few more. Oh, Mr. Batch was a gent sure enough, though a son of Ham as we are told in the Bible, your pa, Mr. Alan, having read about them children of Noah only three Sundays back, and then he——”