Collingwood left these gruesome details—highly pleasing to their narrator—and went up to look at his dead grandfather. He had never seen much of him, but they had kept up a regular correspondence, and always been on terms of affection, and he was sorry that he had not been with the old man at the last. He remained looking at the queer, quiet, old face for a while; when he went down again, Mrs. Clough was talking to a sharp-looking lad, of apparently sixteen or seventeen years, who stood at the door leading into the shop, and who glanced at Collingwood with keen interest and speculation.
"Here's Jabey Naylor wants to know if he's to do aught, Mestur," said the housekeeper. "Of course, I've telled him 'at we can't have the shop open till the burying's over—so I don't know what theer is that he can do."
"Oh, well, let him come into the shop with me," answered Collingwood. He motioned the lad to follow him out of the parlour. "So you were Mr. Bartle's assistant, eh?" he asked. "Had he anybody else?"
"Nobody but me, sir," replied the lad. "I've been with him a year."
"And your name's what?" inquired Collingwood.
"Jabez Naylor, sir, but everybody call me Jabey."
"I see—Jabey for short, eh?" said Collingwood good-humouredly. He walked into the shop, followed by the boy, and closed the door. The outer door into Quagg Alley was locked: a light blind was drawn over the one window; the books and engravings on the shelves and in the presses were veiled in a half-gloom. "Well, as Mrs. Clough says, we can't do any business for a few days, Jabey—after that we must see what can be done. You shall have your wages just the same, of course, and you may look in every day to see if there's anything you can do. You were here yesterday, of course? Were you in the shop when Mr. Bartle went out?"
"Yes, sir," replied the lad. "I'd been in with him all the afternoon. I was here when he went out—and here when they came to say he'd died at Mr. Eldrick's."
Collingwood sat down in his grandfather's chair, at a big table, piled high with books and papers, which stood in the middle of the floor.
"Did my grandfather seem at all unwell when he went out?" he asked.