“No, I donʼt think I ever did. Dear me, how odd it smells! Why, how grave you are, Dr. Hutton!”
“So will you be, when I have told you what I have to tell. My discovery is for your ears only; I have been to London about it, and there found out its meaning. Now I will act upon your advice. Nothing in all my experience—though I have seen a great deal of the world—nothing has ever surprised me more than what I have told you.”
“But you forget, Dr. Hutton,” cried John, imbibing excitement, “that as yet you have told me nothing at all, only shown me something which I cannot in the least make out. A cylinder, hollow, and blocked at one end; of a substance resembling book–binding, and of a most unsavoury odour!”
“Ha!” replied Rue Hutton, “ha, my dear sir, you little guess the importance of that thing no bigger than a good cigar. Ah, indeed! Ah, yes!”
“Do you mean to tell me, or not, Dr. Hutton? Your behaviour is most unusual. I am greatly surprised by your manner.”
“Ah, no doubt; no doubt of that. Very odd if you were not. I also am astonished at your apparent indifference.”
Hereupon Rufus looked so intensely knowing, so loaded with marvel and mystery, too big to be discharged even, that John Rosedew himself, so calm and large, and worthy to be called a philosopher, very nearly grew wroth with longing to know what all the matter was.
Then Dr. Hutton, having bound him by a solemn promise that he would not for the present even hint of that matter to any one, poured out the hissing contents of his mind under the white curls which still overhung the elder manʼs porch of memory. And what he told him was indeed a thing not to be forgotten.
The spectator is said to see more of the game than any of the players see, and the reader of a story knows a great deal more than the actors do, or the writer either, for that matter; marry, therefore, I will not insult any candid intelligence, neither betray Rue Huttonʼs faith, for he is an awkward enemy.
The very next day there came a letter, with coal enough on it to make some gas, and directed in a wandering manner to “Rev. Mr. Rosedew, Nowelhouse, somewhere in England.” Much as we abuse the Post–office people, they generally manage to find us out more cleverly than we do them; and so this letter had not been to more than six wrong places. As our good journalists love to say, “it was couched in the following terms:”—