Dick Forsythe came in, shaking his dripping umbrella, and saying with a good-natured laugh, "Jove! what a wet day! You need a boat to get through the garden. Your aunt—the old one, I think it was—asked me, if I was passing, to bring you these overshoes. She was afraid you had none, and would take cold."
He laughed again, as though he knew how amusing such nonsense was, and then had a gleam of surprise at Gifford's gravity.
"I'd gone to her house with a message from my mother," he continued; "you know we get off to-morrow. Mother's decided to go, too, so of course there are a good many things to do, and the old lady is so strict about Ashurst customs I've had to go round and 'return thanks' to everybody."
Gifford had taken the parcel from Dick's hand, and thanked him briefly. The young man, however, seemed in no haste to go.
"I don't know which is damper, this room or out-of-doors," he said, seating himself in Mr. Denner's big chair,—though Gifford was standing—and looking about in an interested way; "must have been a gloomy house to live in. Wonder he never got married. Perhaps he couldn't find anybody willing to stay in such a hole,—it's so confoundedly damp. He died in here, didn't he?" This was in a lower voice.
"Yes," Gifford answered.
"Shouldn't think you'd stay alone," Dick went on; "it is awfully dismal. I see he cheered himself once in a while." He pointed to a tray, which held a varied collection of pipes and a dingy tobacco pouch of buckskin with a border of colored porcupine quills.
"Yes, Mr. Denner smoked," Gifford was constrained to say.
"I think," said Dick, clapping his hand upon his breast-pocket, "I'll have a cigar myself. It braces one up this weather." He struck a match on the sole of his boot, forgetting it was wet, and vowing good-naturedly that he was an ass. "No objection, I suppose?" he added, carefully biting off the end of his cigar.
"I should prefer," Gifford replied slowly, "that you did not smoke. There is an impropriety about it, which surely you must appreciate."