CHAPTER XI.
JESSAMINE.
"How are you, old man?"
"Middlin', thanky'; and how be you, gov'nor?"
"Middlin' also; and your missus?"
"Only sadly. I fear she's goin' slow but sure the way of all flesh."
"Bless us! 'Tis a trouble and expense them sort o' things. Now to work, shall we? What do you figure up?"
"And you?"
"Oh, well, I'm not here on reg'lar business. Huntin' on my own score to-day."
"Oh, ay! Nice port this."
"Best the old fellow had in his cellar. I told, the executrix I should like the taste of it, and advise thereon."
The valuers for dilapidations, vulgarly termed dilapidators, were met in the dining-room of the deserted parsonage. Mr. Scantlebray was on one side, Mr. Cargreen on the other. Mr. Scantlebray was on that of the "orphings," as he termed his clients, and Mr. Cargreen on that of the Rev. Mr. Mules, the recently nominated rector to S. Enodoc.
Mr. Scantlebray was a tall, lean man, with light gray eyes, a red face, and legs and arms that he shook every now and then as though they were encumbrances to his trunk and he was going to shake them off, as a poodle issuing from a bath shakes the water out of his locks. Mr. Cargreen was a bullet-headed man, with a white neckcloth, gray whiskers, a solemn face, and a sort of perpetual "Let-us-pray" expression on his lips and in his eyes—a composing of his interior faculties and abstraction from worldly concerns.
"I am here," said Mr. Scantlebray, "as adviser and friend—you understand, old man—of the orphings and their haunt."
