Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/47



AS the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering staircase, Mortimer following them forth from the dining-room, turned into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded, and requested to see the messenger who had brought the paper. He was a boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold frame than procession, and more carving than country.

" Whose writing is this? "

" Mine, sir."

" Who told you to write it?"

" My father, Jesse Hexam."

" Is it he who found the body? "

" Yes, sir."

" What is your father? "

The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the right leg of his trousers, " He gets his living along-shore."

" Is it far?"

" Is which far? " asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road to Canterbury.

" To your father's?"

" It's a goodish stretch, sir. I come up in a cab, and the