"I heard the bell-man recite your notice," said Sir William, speaking leisurely, as one who is tired out; "that, and the bill which they were beginning to paste as I came this way, should help. I've walked my legs off. I have enquired everywhere. I, too, asked if Miss Lucy had been seen down at the harbour at any hour this morning. But my fixed idea was, and still is, that the person who wrote to her through the Minorca's steward was somebody that she helped, somebody in poverty and[Pg 203] want, and I called upon everybody likely to know of the existence of such an individual; but to no purpose. The parson, the apothecary, all the tradespeople I looked in upon, could tell me nothing. Once I thought I had run the person we want to earth. Mrs Moore, who keeps the greengrocer's shop, told me that there was an old woman who lived in a cottage just out of Lower Street, out of whose house she had once seen Miss Lucy Acton issue. I got the address, called at the cottage and saw a squalid female who said she was Mrs Mortimer's niece, and that Mrs Mortimer had died that morning at five o'clock. She said it was true that Miss Acton occasionally visited Mrs Mortimer and brought her little comforts and read to her. I got no further. This is the extent and value of my report, and I am as profoundly puzzled," said the Admiral, raising the glass of brandy and seltzer and examining it before he drank, "as I was this morning.",
After breakfast Captain Acton and Lucy walked the deck, whilst the Admiral, with his big pipe, seated himself right aft all alone, for this little ship was steered by a wheel in front of the deck-house; he sat puffing out clouds of tobacco with his eyes fixed upon the glimmering phantoms of the British Fleet, which hovered in the north-east quarter in a few dim, waning gleams; and the moods of his mind[Pg 407] were faithfully reproduced in his jolly, honest, well-bred, kindly face.,
"What is that you say?" cried Aunt Caroline, starting in her chair and peering over her gold-rimmed glasses at Mr Lawrence..
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