The old man removed his hat and regarded her with a whimsical smile.
“’Tis across the river, lady, and there isn’t no bridge for some many miles. Maybe with any luck ye may meet a cattle-boat to take ye over but there’s little surety about them things.”
“What’s this place, then?” asked Sorio abruptly, approaching the iron railings.
“This, mister? Why this be the doctor’s house of the County Asylum. This be where they keep the superior cases, as you might say, them what pays summat, ye understand, and be only what you might call half daft. You must a’ seed the County Asylum as you came along. ’Tis a wonderful large place, one of the grandest, so they say, on this side of the kingdom.”
“Thank you,” said Sorio curtly. “That’s just what we wanted to know. Yes, we saw the house you speak of. It certainly looks big enough. Have there been many new cases lately? Is this what you might call a good year for mental collapses?”
As he spoke he peered curiously between the iron bars as if anxious to get some sight of the “half daft,” who could afford to pay for their keep.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘a good year,’ mister,” answered the man, watching him with little twinkling eyes, “but I reckon folk have been as liable to go shaky this year as most other years. ’Tisn’t in the season, I take it, ’tis in the man or for the matter of that,” and he cast an apologetic leer in Nance’s direction, “in the woman.”
“Come on, Adrian,” interposed his companion, “you see that guide-book told us all wrong. We’d better get back to the station.”
But Sorio held tightly to the railings with both his hands.
“Don’t tease me, Nance,” he said irritably. “I want to talk to this excellent man.”