Another Man
As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering staircase, Mortimer, following them forth from the dining-room, turned into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded, and requested to see the messenger who had brought the paper. He was a boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold frame than procession, and more carving than country.
“Whose writing is this?”
“Mine, sir.”
“Who told you to write it?”
“My father, Jesse Hexam.”
“Is it he who found the body?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your father?”
The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the right leg of his trousers, “He gets his living along-shore.”
“Is it far?”
“Is which far?” asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road to Canterbury.