“And where did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?” Mr. Crisparkle had left him at Cloisterham.
“And when did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?” That morning.
“Umps!” said Mr. Grewgious. “He didn’t say he was coming, perhaps?”
“Coming where?”
“Anywhere, for instance?” said Mr. Grewgious.
“No.”
“Because here he is,” said Mr. Grewgious, who had asked all these questions, with his preoccupied glance directed out at window. “And he don’t look agreeable, does he?”
Mr. Crisparkle was craning towards the window, when Mr. Grewgious added:
“If you will kindly step round here behind me, in the gloom of the room, and will cast your eye at the second-floor landing window, in yonder house, I think you will hardly fail to see a slinking individual in whom I recognise our local friend.”
“You are right!” cried Mr. Crisparkle.
“Umps!” said Mr. Grewgious. Then he added, turning his face so abruptly that his head nearly came into collision with Mr. Crisparkle’s: “what should you say that our local friend was up to?”
The last passage he had been shown in the Diary returned on Mr. Crisparkle’s mind with the force of a strong recoil, and he asked Mr. Grewgious if he thought it possible that Neville was to be harassed by the keeping of a watch upon him?