She soon returned, bringing a visitor, a coarse fair-haired man, with a face not unlike a horse’s face, but without the beauty. His cheeks were rather puffy; his eyelids drooped down over his eyes, so that he gave one the impression of extreme short sight, or of some eye-disease. He peered out under his eyelids. One felt that the house so lit was a dark, narrow, mean little thieves’ house.
“Mr. Haly to see you, sir,” said Jessie.
Mr. Haly entered, to find his friend Stukeley retiring through the other door. He turned back in the doorway on hearing the name.
“Oh, it’s you, Monty,” he said. “What brings you to Salcombe?”
“You took me for a dun,” said Mr. Haly, with a jocular whine peculiar to him. “You took me for a dun. I’ll sit down, if this pretty charmer here”—he ogled Jenny, with a look which would have made a wanton chaste—“will give me a chair. Thank you, my dear.” He sat down; Jessie left the room.
“I’ve come down with young Killigrew,” he said. “He offered to pay my expenses. So I thought I’d look you up, to see how married bliss looks. Hey, Tom? How’s the wife? Hey, Tom? How’s Cupid’s dove? Hey? I suppose she’s making little clothes already? Hey?”
He laughed pursily; helped himself, unbidden, to the beer, cut himself a snack from his friend’s untasted breakfast, buttered it thickly, and began to eat. His friendships were selfish always. “Give nothing, but take all you can get,” would have been his motto, had he had sufficient intellect to think it out. It had helped him in the world; but his greed, never sated, had perhaps helped him less than his power of flattering those who were richer, but no more intelligent than himself. Stukeley ignored his friend’s questions, not because he objected to them, but because he expected something more from Mr. Haly.
“There was another reason why I called,” said Haly, after a pause. “I travelled down from town with old Bent, your landlord that was.”
“With old Bent?” said Stukeley, becoming more attentive.
“Yes,” continued Haly. “He’d heard you were in Salcombe. I believe he wants to see you.”