When I came up to the hat manufactory, Smethurst himself was standing
in the garden gate. He was brushing one Canadian felt hat, and
several others had been put to await their turn one above the other
on his own head, so that he looked something like the typical Jew
old-clothes man. As I drew near, he came sidling out of the doorway
to accost me, with so curious an expression on his face that I
instinctively prepared myself to apologise for some unwitting
trespass. His first question rather confirmed me in this belief, for
it was whether or not he had seen me going up this way last night;
and after having answered in the affirmative, I waited in some alarm
for the rest of my indictment. But the good man's heart was full of
peace; and he stood there brushing his hats and prattling on about
fishing, and walking, and the pleasures of convalescence, in a bright
shallow stream that kept me pleased and interested, I could scarcely
say how. As he went on, he warmed to his subject, and laid his hats
aside to go along the water-side and show me where the large trout
commonly lay, underneath an overhanging bank; and he was much
disappointed, for my sake, that there were none visible just then.
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