th-breaking?"

"I didn't hear all that," Miss Oliver confessed: "or not to notice.
It seemed so funny his getting up at that hour and dangling his legs
on a wall."

"We will press to have a married man planned to us next time," said
Mrs Polsue. "A wife wouldn't allow it."

"Do you suppose he _smoked?_" asked Miss Oliver.

"I shouldn't wonder. . . . He certainly does it at home, for I took
the trouble to smell his window-curtains; and at an hour like that,
with nobody about--"

"There's an All-seeing Eye, however early you choose to dangle your
legs," said Miss Oliver.

CHAPTER V.

THE ANONYMOUS LETTER.

Just about seven o'clock next morning Nicky-Nan, who had breakfasted
early and taken post early in the porchway to watch against any
possible _ruse_ of the foe--for, Bank Holiday or no Bank Holiday, he
was taking no risks--spied Lippity-Libby the postman coming over the
bridge towards him with his dot-and-go-one gait.

Lippity-Libby, drawing near, held out a letter in his hand and
flourished it.

"Now don't excite yourself," he warned Nicky-Nan. "When first I seed
your name 'pon the address I said to myself 'What a good job if that
poor fella's luck should be here at last, and this a fortun' arrived
from his rich relatives in Canada!' That's the very words I said to
myself."

"As it happens, I han't got no rich relatives, neither here nor in
Canada," answered Nicky-Nan. "Is that letter for me? Or are you
playin' me some trick?"

"A man of your descent," said Lippity-Libby, "can't help havin'
relatives in great quantities dispersed about the world. I've
figured it out, and the sum works like that old 'un we used to do on
our slates about a horse-shoe. Your great-grandfather married your
great-grandmother, and that set the ball rollin'--to go no farther
back than the head will carry. Six sons an' daughters they had, for
the sake of argyment, and each married and had six again.
Why, damme, by that time there's not a quarter in Europe where a rich
chap deceased mayn't be croppin' up and leavin' you his money, for no
better reason than that you're a Nanjivell. That always seemed to me
one of the advantages of good birth. For my part," the postman
continued, "my father and mother never spoke of such matters, though
she was a Collins and married in Lanteglos parish, where I daresay
the whole pedigary could be looked up, if one wasn't a postman and
could spare the time. But in the long evenin