A Fair Fraud — page 139: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER IX Five minutes later, the whole party having left the farmhouse and dispersed themselves in pairs or singly about the garden or disap- _peared into the adjoining woods, Mrs Andrews, the farmer’s wife, went to the bottom of the steep ladder-like staircase and called out up it,— ‘The company’s all gone away now, Mr ‘Icks. You can come down if you like.’ Now Mr Hicks was Mrs Andrew’s lodger. ‘Poor gentleman!’ she remarked to James, the footman, who was engaged in packing the remains of the feast back into the hampers, ‘“’e’s in bad ‘ealth, and that shy, ’e’s afraid to look strangers in the face!’ The lodger came shambling down the stair- case. He was tall and lean, and unspeak- ably shabby and down-in-the-world looking. He cast a side glance of suspicion at the fat, sleek footman as he went by. ‘A queer-looking card you've got hold of, Mrs Andrews,’ remarked James, as the man 128 GOMMGIOO <S (GO) uu