“This gate” was the side-gate. It opened on a path that led direct to the sitting-room with glass-doors. Nash was standing just inside the room, and of all the uncomfortable expressions that can sit on a man’s face, the worst sat on his. The Squire noticed it, and spoke in a whisper.
“Johnny, lad, he looks just as though he had seen a ghost.”
It’s just what he did look like—a ghost that frightened him. We were close up before he noticed us. Giving a great start, he smoothed his face, smiled, and held out his hand.
“You don’t look well,” said the Squire, as he sat down. “What’s amiss?”
“Nothing at all,” answered Nash. “The heat pothers me, as usual: can’t sleep at night for it. Why, here’s the postman! What makes him so late, I wonder?”
Pettipher was coming straight down to the window, letters in hand. Something in his free, onward step seemed to say that he must be in the habit of delivering the letters to Nash at that same window.
“Two, sir, this morning,” said Pettipher, handing them in.
As Nash was taking the letters, one of them fell, either by his own awkwardness or by Pettipher’s. I picked it up and gave it to him, address upwards. The Squire saw it.
“Why, that’s the same handwriting that puzzled me,” cried he, speaking on the impulse of the moment. “It seemed familiar to me, but I could not remember where I had seen it. It’s a ship letter, as was the other.”
Nash laughed—a lame kind of laugh—and put both letters into his pocket. “It comes from a chum of mine that I picked up over yonder,” said he to the Squire, nodding his head towards where the sea might be supposed to lie. “I don’t think you could ever have been familiar with it.”