Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/147

Rh behind the laurel outside the open window of the study, listened to every word of the conversation.

"Most decidedly I was not here last week," replied Mr. Bouncer.

"Then you have not been in the house for some time past?"

"Never set foot in it till last night!" said Mr. Bouncer, as he thought—This old bald-pate is a very queer party; he can't be, as I imagined, the parson of the parish, or he would not ask such questions. Perhaps he 's some parson who is on a visit to the Rectory.

Dr. Dustacre nodded his head in a Burleigh-like way, as though his examination had satisfactorily determined one point in the case on which his professional opinion had been requested. "It is as Mr. Smalls wrote to me," he said to himself. "One of the mental delusions of this Mr. Winstanley is, that he imagines that he has not been at the Woodlands for many years." Dr. Dustacre then, as sailors say, went on another tack. Meanwhile, the Simon Pure, who was crouched behind the laurel, had a significant smile upon his face as he attentively listened to the conversation in the study.

"What a nice man Mr. Smalls is—I mean the Squire!" said the Doctor.

"So he seems," replied Mr. Bouncer.

"You must be very much attached to him?" pursued the Doctor, interrogatively.

"Me? Why?" asked Mr. Bouncer, with some surprise.

"For all that he has done for you," said the Doctor.

"He has done nothing for me, that I am aware of," said Mr. Bouncer, "beyond giving me a good dinner last night and a capital glass of port, and allowing his son to invite me here."