“Don’t quite know what to make of him,” muttered Moredock. “That crack o’ the head don’t seem to have healed up, for he looks queer sometimes. I don’t like the look of things, somehow; but we shall see—we shall see. Why don’t Dally come down, too? I wanted to know how things is going there, and she ought to ha’ got that shirt made by now.
“Hi! hi! hi!” the old man laughed. “Make me two noo best shirts o’ fine linen as a man may be proud on. Ill wind as blows nobody any good.”
The old man went chuckling away, as he thought over the two new Sunday shirts he was to have made out of the surplice, which, after unpicking and cutting off edgings, he had washed and dried and handed as so much new material to Dally to make up, long immunity from detection having made him daring enough to trust the linen to the very place that, to an ordinary observer, would have seemed most dangerous.
But the shirts were not made yet, for Dally had declared it to be all bother, and had put the roll of linen in her drawer, inspired by a feeling that gran’fa couldn’t live much longer, and then the linen would do for her.
Oddly enough, as Moredock mused upon the whiteness and coolness of the coming undergarments, the carrier stopped at the Rectory gate, and delivered a parcel, carriage paid by North Midland Railway to King’s Hampton station, but sixpence to pay for the ten miles by cart.
“Dear me!” said Salis, turning over the package, which was evidently a box done up in very stout brown paper. “‘The Reverend Hartley Salis, Duke’s Hampton Rectory, Warwickshire. By N.M. Rail and Thompson, carrier. Carriage paid to King’s Hampton.’ Well, that’s plain enough, Mary.”
“Yes, dear; it’s evidently for you.”
“Yes, evidently for me; eh, Leo?”
“Yes,” said Leo, looking up from her book for a moment, and dropping her eyes again without displaying any further interest.
“It’s very curious,” said Salis, rather excitedly. “‘From Irish and Lawn, robe makers, Southampton Street.’ Why, surely—bless my soul, I never sent. I—”