"And that's all? I see. And I'm not to look at your face? Good. It's prettier than the paper, and far more deserving of attention than the drawings, but far be it from me to quiz a lady when she'd rather I didn't. Yet before you start the talking--perhaps when you've started you'll be slow to finish--let me say a word. You remember what you told me about that visit you paid to Cuthbert Grahame--that last visit when they wouldn't let you in?" "It's exactly about that I wish to speak to you." "Then that's queerer still, because it's about that I've come to talk. You told me that it was Nannie Foreshaw who refused you admission, and that she poured some water on you; and I told you that I didn't see how she could have very well done that, since, at that very time, she was lying, with her leg broken, in bed. When I left I wrote and asked her what she had to say. I've had an answer from her, and here it is." He took an envelope from his pocket, and from the envelope a letter, speaking all the time. "You'll bear in mind that Nannie's not so young as she was, and that, of late, things have fared ill with her, as they have a trick of doing when one grows old. She's had a broken leg, and that's no trifle when the marrow's getting dry in the bone; and her master--whom she'd had in her arms even before he'd lain in his mother's--had come to his death in a way that wasn't so plain as it might have been. She's never quite got the better of that broken leg; she walks with a stick, and she'll never walk without one; and she'll never be rid of the thought that, when Cuthbert Grahame died, though she was only just above, she couldn't get down to him, or shut his eyes, or see him before he was put in his coffin, or stand by his grave when he was buried. That thought troubles her more than the other. Between the one and the other, and the stress of advancing years, she's not so good a penwoman as she used to be. And so it comes about that this letter which I have here was not written by her own hand, though I have no doubt that they're just her own words which are set down in it." Unfolding the sheet of paper he proceeded to read aloud.