"Who's that?" said he. "Come in!"
Surely there had been no figure leaning on the back of his chair;
no face looking over it. It is certain that no gliding footstep
touched the floor, as he lifted up his head, with a start, and
spoke. And yet there was no mirror in the room on whose surface
his own form could have cast its shadow for a moment; and,
Something had passed darkly and gone!
"I'm humbly fearful, sir," said a fresh-coloured busy man, holding
the door open with his foot for the admission of himself and a
wooden tray he carried, and letting it go again by very gentle and
careful degrees, when he and the tray had got in, lest it should
close noisily, "that it's a good bit past the time to-night. But
Mrs. William has been taken off her legs so often" -
"By the wind? Ay! I have heard it rising."
" - By the wind, sir - that it's a mercy she got home at all. Oh
dear, yes. Yes. It was by the wind, Mr. Redlaw. By the wind."
He had, by this time, put down the tray for dinner, and was
employed in lighting the lamp, and spreading a cloth on the table.
From this employment he desisted in a hurry, to stir and feed the
fire, and then resumed it; the lamp he had lighted, and the blaze
that rose under his hand, so quickly changing the appearance of the
room, that it seemed as if the mere coming in of his fresh red face
and active manner had made the pleasant alteration.
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