Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/58

 suspicious of Mr. Julius Handford, inquired before taking their departure too whether he believed there was anything that really looked bad here?

The Abbot replied with reticence, " couldn't say. If a murder, anybody might have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted 'prenticeship. Not so murder. We were all of us up to that. Had seen scores of people come to identify, and never saw one person struck in that particular way. Might, however, have been Stomach and not Mind. If so, rum stomach. But to be sure there were rum everythings. Pity there was not a word of truth in that superstition about bodies bleeding when touched by the hand of the right person; you never got a sign out of bodies. You got row enough out of such as he— she was good for all night now " (referring here to the banging demands of the liver), " but you got nothing out of bodies if it was ever so. "

There being nothing more to be done until the inquest was held next day, the friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his son went their separate way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer bade his boy go home while he turned into a red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically bulging over the causeway, " for a half-a-pint."

The boy lifted the latch he had lifted before, and found his sister again seated before the fire at her work. Who raised her head upon his coming in and asking:

" Where did you go, Liz? "

" I went out in the dark."

" There was no necessity for that. It was all right enough."

" One of the gentlemen, the one who didn't speak while I was there, looked hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what my face meant. But there! Don't mind me, Charley! I was all in a tremble of another sort when you owned to father you could write a little.'"

" Ah! But I made believe I wrote so badly, as that it was odds if any one could read it. And when I wrote slowest