Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 2.djvu/317

Rh "Have you got a sharp touch of it just now, Mr. Stringer?"

"Not just to-day, sir. I've been a little easier since Saturday. The worst of this burst is over. But Lord bless you, sir, it don't leave me,—not for a fortnight at a time, now; it don't. And it ain't what I drink, nor it ain't what I eat."

"Constitutional, I suppose?" said Toogood.

"Look here, sir;" and Mr. Stringer shewed his visitor the chalk stones in all his knuckles. "They say I'm all a mass of chalk. I sometimes think they'll break me up to mark the scores behind my own door with." And Mr. Stringer laughed at his own wit.

Mr. Toogood laughed too. He laughed loud and cheerily. And then he asked a sudden question, keeping his eye as he did so upon a little square open window, which communicated between the landlord's private room and the bar. Through this small aperture he could see as he stood a portion of the hat worn by the man with the red nose. Since he had been in the room with the landlord, the man with the red nose had moved his head twice, on each occasion drawing himself closer into his corner; but Mr. Toogood, by moving also, had still contrived to keep a morsel of the hat in sight. He laughed cheerily at the landlord's joke, and then he asked a sudden question,—looking well at the morsel of the hat as he did so. " Mr. Stringer," said he, "how do you pay your rent, and to whom do you pay it?" There was immediately a jerk in the hat, and then it disappeared. Toogood, stepping to the open door, saw that the red-nosed clerk had taken his hat off and was very busy at his accounts.

"How do I pay my rent?" said Mr. Stringer, the landlord. "Well, sir, since this cursed gout has been so bad, it's hard enough to pay it at all sometimes. You ain't sent here to look for it, sir, are you?"

"Not I," said Toogood. "It was only a chance question." He felt that he had nothing more to do with Mr. Stringer, the landlord. Mr. Stringer, the landlord, knew nothing about Mr. Soames's cheque. "What's the name of your clerk?" said he.

"The name of my clerk?" said Mr. Stringer. "Why do you want to know the name of my clerk?"

"Does he ever pay your rent for you?"

"Well, yes; he does, at times. He pays it into the bank for the lady as owns the house. Is there any reason for your asking these questions, sir? It isn't usual, you know, for a stranger, sir."

Toogood during the whole of this time was standing with his eye upon the red-nosed man, and the red-nosed man could not move. The