"Good-evening, Mr. Jan."
Jan turned round, poker in hand, and stared amiably. "Law!" cried he. "Who'd have thought it?"
The old word; the word he had learned at school—law. It was Jan's favourite mode of expressing surprise still, and Lady Verner never could break him of it. He shook hands cordially with Dr. West.
The doctor shut the door, slipping the bolt, and sat down to the fire. Jan cleared a space on the table, which was covered with jars and glass vases, cylinders, and other apparatus, seemingly for chemical purposes, and took his seat there.
The doctor had taken a run home, "making a morning call, as it might be metaphorically observed," he said to Jan. Just to have a sight of home faces, and hear a little home news. Would Mr. Jan recite to him somewhat of the latter?
Jan did so; touching upon all he could recollect. From John Massingbird's return to Verner's Pride, and the consequent turning out of Mr. Verner and his wife, down to the death of Sir Rufus Hautley; not forgetting the pranks played by the "ghost," and the foiled expedition of Mrs. Peckaby to New Jerusalem. Some of these items of intelligence the doctor had heard before, for Jan periodically wrote to him. The doctor looked taller, and stouter, and redder than ever, and as he leaned thoughtfully forward, and the crimson blaze played upon his face, Jan thought how like he was growing to his sister, the late Mrs. Verner.
"Mr. Jan," said the doctor, "it is not right that my nephew, John Massingbird, should enjoy Verner's Pride."
"Of course it's not," answered Jan. "Only things don't go by rights always, you know. It's but seldom they do."
"He ought to give it up to Mr. Verner."
"So I told him," said Jan. "I should, in his place."