Apparitions -- Fiction; Aunts -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
"Lor', Master Austin, wherever was you brought up?" exclaimed Lubin,
in grave amazement at the youth's ignorance. "When a gentleman
'travels' in anything, it means he goes about getting orders for it.
Now this here gentleman was agent, I take it, for some big millinery
shop in London, and come down here wi' boxes an' boxes o' bonnets, an'
tokes, and all sorts o' female headgear as women goes about in----"
"In short, he was a commercial traveller," said Austin, very mildly.
"You see, my dear Lubin, we have been talking of different things. I
wasn't thinking of a gentleman who hawks haberdashery. When I said
traveller, I meant a man who goes tramping across Africa, and shoots
elephants, and gets snowed up at the North Pole, and has all sorts of
uncomfortable and quite incredible adventures. They always have faces
as brown as an old trunk, and generally limp when they walk. That's
the sort of person I'm looking out for. You haven't seen anyone like
that, have you?"
"Nay--nary a one," said Lubin, shaking his head. "Would he have been
putting up at one o' the inns, now, or staying long wi' some o' the
gentry?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," acknowledged Austin.
"Might as well go about looking for a ram wi' five feet," remarked
Lubin. "Some things you can't find 'cause they don't exist, and other
things you can't find 'cause there's too many of 'em. And as you don't
know nothing about this gentleman, and wouldn't know him if you met
him in the street permiscuous, I take it you'll have to wait to see
what he looks like till he turns up again of his own accord. 'Tain't
in reason as you can go up to every old gentleman with a brown face
as you never see before an' ask him if he's ever been snowed up at the
North Pole and why he hasn't got a wooden leg. He'd think, as likely
as not, as you was trying to get a rise out of him. Don't you know
what the name may be, neither?"
"Oh yes, I do, of course," responded Austin. "He's a Mr Ogilvie."
"Never heard of 'im," said Lubin. "Might find out at one o' the inns
if any party o' that name's been staying there, but I doubt they
wouldn't remember. Folks don't generally stay more'n one night, you
see, just to have a look at the old market-place and the church, and
then off they go next morning and don't leave no addresses. Th' only
sort as stays a day or two are the artists, and they'll stay painting
here for more'n a week at a time. It may 'a been one o' them."
"I wonder!" exclaimed Austin, struck by the idea. "Perhaps he's an
artist, after all; artists do travel, I know. I never thought of that.
However, it doesn't matter. It's only some old friend of Aunt
Charlotte's, and he's coming to call on her soon, so it isn't worth
bothering about meanwhile."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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