"Late! I should think it is late, Master Frank," answered Mrs. Trim, in wrath. She was familiar enough with him, from the fact of going to the doctor's house occasionally to help the servant. "I goes over to Pendon this afternoon to have a dish o' dea with a friend there, never thinking but what Trim would attend to poor Nanny. But no, not a bit of it. Draat all they men!—a set o' helpless vools. I don't know whaat work Trim's good for, save to dig tha graves."
"Where is Trim?"
"Indoors, sir, smoking of his pipe."
Frank stepped in without ceremony. Trim, who was sexton as well as clerk, sat at the kitchen-window, which looked towards the field at the back. He was a man of some fifty years: short and thin, with scanty locks of iron-grey hair, just as silent as his wife was loquacious, and respectful in his manner. Rising when Frank entered, he put his pipe down in the hearth, and touched his hair.
"Trim, I want to send you on an errand," said Frank, lowering his voice against any possible eavesdroppers, and speaking hurriedly; for he had patients still to see to-night, "Can you take a little journey for me to-morrow morning?"
"Sure I can, sir," replied Trim. "Anywhere you please."
"All right. I went to Tello this afternoon, and omitted to call at the post-office for some letters that may be waiting there. You must go off betimes, by the half-past seven o'clock train; get the letters—if there are any—and bring them to me at once. You'll be back again long before the sun has reached the meridian, if you make haste. There's a sovereign to pay your expenses. Keep the change."
"And in what name are the letters lying there, sir?" asked the clerk, a thoughtful man at all times, and saluting again as he took up the gold piece.
"Name? Oh, mine: Francis Raynor. You will be sure not to fail me?"
The clerk shook his head emphatically. He never failed any one.