nd to make the best of
what might well prove an awkward business. So Henry wrote to his father
that night, explaining that he was bringing a distinguished visitor to
the village, and though he would reside at the inn, he would no doubt be
a good deal at their house. This he did after having seriously debated
with himself the idea of writing to his friend and framing a set of
excuses or plausible reasons why he should not go. Henry's ingenuity was
not equal to that.

All this explains why on a certain autumn afternoon the Post Office of
Hampton Bagot, and indeed the whole of the village street, exhaled an
air of expectancy. There were hurried traffickings between the shop of
Edward John Charles, the "Wings and Spur," the butcher's, and sundry
others. Perhaps the loudest note of warning that an event of unusual
interest portended was struck by the bright red necktie which Edward
John Charles had donned at the urgent request of his daughters. This was
truly a matter for surprise, for while he had been seen occasionally on
weekdays wearing a collar, the tie had always been a Sunday vanity. His
clothes, too, were his Sunday best. His appearances at the door were
frequent and short, with no pleasant play of the coat-tails; and his
earnest questing glances towards the road from the station, which opened
into the main street of the village some little distance east of the
Post Office, were foolishly unjustified before the dinner hour, as there
was no possibility of the visitors arriving until the late afternoon.

Customers at the Post Office were all condemned to a delightfully
exaggerated account of the "lit'ry gent from Lunnon" who was to grace
the village with his presence and suffuse Henry Charles with reflected
glory, though it seemed a difficult thing to conceive the pride of
Hampton as in need of glorifying. But the customers were as keen for
Edward John's gossip as he to purvey it, and it is more than probable
that several ounces of shag were bought that day by persons who stood in
no immediate need of them, but were glad of an excuse for a chat with
the postmaster. Even the snivelling Miffin shuffled across with such an
excuse for a chat, and returned to tell his apprentice that he could see
no reason for all this "'ow d'y' do."

"S'possin' there was a railway haccident! Stranger things 'ave 'appened,
merk moi werds," said he, with a waggle of his forefinger in the
direction of his junior, who, though much in use as