Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/286

278 after dinner strolled out to the big filbert-tree under which, for a few weeks in the year, Parson West had his dessert laid and sipped his thin port an old common-room fashion to which he clung. To the end of his days he had the white cloth removed before dessert, and the fruits and the one decanter set out upon polished mahogany.

I glanced at him while helping myself to strawberries and cream. He sat nervously folding and refolding the napkin on his knee. By-and-by he spoke, but without looking at me.

"I lost my temper this afternoon, and I beg your pardon, my boy."

I began to stammer my contrition for having offended him: but he cut me short with a wave of the hand. "The fact is," he explained, "I was worried by something quite different."

"By John Emmet's death," I suggested.

He nodded, and looked at me queerly while he poured out a glass of Tarragona.

"He was my gardener years ago, before he set up market-gardening on his own account."

"That's queer too," said I.

"What's queer?" He asked it sharply.

"Why, to find a gardener cox'n of a life-boat."

"He followed the sea in early life. But I'll tell you what is queer, and that's his last wish. His particular desire was that I, and I alone, should screw down the coffin. He had Trudgeon the carpenter up to measure him, and begged this of me