Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/258

250. He han't got the trunks, only a kit-bag. By the soft hat he wears I should say a agent in advance. Likely we'll have a circus before long."

His father and mother were dead these ten years. He had sent home money to pay the funeral expenses and buy a substantial headstone. But he had not been up to the cemetery yet. He was not a sentimental man. Still, he had expected his return to make some little stir in Tregarrick, and now a shade of disappointment began to creep over his humour.

He flung away the end of his cigar and strolled up the sunny pavement to a sweetshop where he had once bought ha'porths of liquorice and cinnamon-rock. The legend, "E. Hosking, Maker of Cheesecakes to Queen Victoria," still decorated the window. He entered and demanded a pound of best "fairing," smiling at the magnificence of the order. Mrs. Hosking—her white mob-cap and apron clean as ever—offered him a macaroon for luck, and weighed out the sweets. Her hand shook more than of old.

"You don't remember me, Mrs. Hosking?"

"What is it you say? You must speak a little louder, please, I'm deaf."

"You don't remember me?"

"No, I don't," she said composedly. "I'm gone terrible blind this last year or two."

The Emigrant paid for his sweets and walked