By-and-by he
spoke, but without looking at me.
"I lost my temper this afternoon, and I beg your pardon, my boy."
I began to stammer my contrition for having offended him: but he cut me
short with a wave of the hand. "The fact is," he explained, "I was
worried by something quite different."
"By John Emmet's death," I suggested. He nodded, and looked at me
queerly while he poured out a glass of Tarragona.
"He was my gardener years ago, before he set up market-gardening on his
own account."
"That's queer too," said I.
"What's queer?" He asked it sharply.
"Why, to find a gardener cox'n of a life-boat."
"He followed the sea in early life. But I'll tell you what _is_ queer,
and that's his last wish. His particular desire was that I, and I
alone, should screw down the coffin. He had Trudgeon the carpenter up
to measure him, and begged this of me in Trudgeon's presence and the
doctor's. What's more, I consented."
"That's jolly unpleasant," was my comment, for lack of a better.
The Vicar sat silent for a while, staring across the lawn, while I
watched a spider which had let itself down from a branch overhead and
was casting anchor on the decanter's rim. With his next question he
seemed to have changed the subject.
"Where do you keep your boat now?"
"Renatus Warne has been putting in a new strake and painting her.
I shall have her down on the beach to-morrow.
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