Page:The Invisible Man - A Grotesque Romance.djvu/289

 And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there were n't three manuscript books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain, with asseverations that everybody thinks he has 'em! But bless you! he has n't. "The Invisible Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It 's that Mr. Kemp put people on with the idea of my having 'em."

And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar.

He is a bachelor man—his tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons—it is expected of him—but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.