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The corporal a stout man walked into the porch-way and knocked. Mrs Penhaligon answered the knock, and after a short colloquy was heard to call back into the passage summoning Mr Nanjivell. In half a minute Nicky-Nan hobbled out. Meanwhile, their passage over the bridge being clear ahead, our two ladies had no good excuse for lingering. Yet they lingered.
"How should it be Samuel Penhaligon, when you know as well as I do that he's gone to the War? No: the man, I regret to say, was Nicholas Nanjivell." "Nicky-Nan? . . . Oh, come, ma'am, I say! Why, what capers could he been cuttin'?" "I feel justified in speaking of him as her partner, seeing that he avowed as much.
"You don't say so! . . . Christian name?" "Nicholas." "'Tis a fair co-incidence," mused the corporal aloud. "I knew a man once by the name of Nanjivell a fish-dealer; but he was called Daniel, an' he's dead, what's more. I remember him all the better, because once upon a time, in my young days, I made a joke upon him, so clever it surprised myself.
But my wife was certain of it, an' all the more because she never allowed to her last breath that the woman's shimmy had been torn at all. Well, so long!" Nicky-Nan carried the letter indoors to his small, dark sitting-room, and there spelled it through painfully, holding the paper close up to the window-pane. It ran: Sunday, 2/8/14. Mr N. Nanjivell.
But when it turned out he was doin' it in earnest against Mr Nanjivell I allowed as I'd give him a taste o' the real article, which is what they call 'Scoutin' for Scouts' in the Advanced Course; whereby he called on Mr Gilbert here, yesterday afternoon; an' Mr Gilbert's back parlour window bein' open because o' the hot weather, and me bein' behind the water-butt at the corner "
What did I tell you?" persisted Mrs Climoe, attempting to thrust herself past. "This is my house," retorted Mrs Penhaligon, bravely heading her off. "If my children but I could take my oath, here afore th' Almighty " "You ask Mr Nanjivell! Why d'ee reckon he's puttin' a lock on his doorway, 'nless 'tis to prevent what I'm tellin' you from happenin' again?" Mrs Penhaligon stared about her.
But as a fact Mrs Penhaligon resorted to nothing but bad language, in which she was backed up by her co-habitant, or whatever you prefer to call him, the man Nanjivell." "Yes, I heard that he took a hand in it." "There you are right.
"Nothing wrong on this side, seemin'ly. . . . Nor, nor there wasn't any breeze o' wind in the night, not to wake me. . . . Anyways, you're a wonderful forgivin' man, Nicholas Nanjivell." "Why so?" "Why, to be up betimes an' workin' yourself cross, plasterin' at th' old house, out o' which if report's true you'll be turned within a week." "Don't you listen to reports; no, nor spread 'em.
"But what puzzles me," went on Mrs Polsue, "is how that Nanjivell found the pluck. Every one knows him for next door to a pauper: and yet he spoke up, as if he had pounds an' to spare." "Perhaps you irritated him," suggested Miss Oliver. "Everybody knows that, poor as folks may be, if you try to set them right beyond a certain point "
"For goodness, children, eat up your meal, an' stop talkin'!" Mrs Penhaligon returned from the hearth to the table and set down a dish of eggs and sizzling bacon. "Wherever you pick up such notions! . . . You must excuse their manners, Mr Nanjivell." But Nicky-Nan was staring at young 'Bert from under fiercely bent eyebrows. "Who told you that I was turnin' out this week?" he demanded.
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