‘Constitutional, I suppose?’ said Toogood.

‘Look here, sir’; and Stringer showed his visitor the chalk stones in all his knuckles.  ’They say I’m a mass of chalk.  I sometimes think they’ll break me up to mark the scores behind my own door with.’  And Mr Stringer laughed at his own wit.

Mr Toogood laughed too.  He laughed loud and cheerily.  And then he asked a sudden question, keeping his eye as he did so upon a little square open window which communicated between the landlord’s private room and the bar.  Through this small aperture he could see as he stood a portion of the hat worn by the man with the red nose.  Since he had been in the room with the landlord, the man with the red nose had moved his head twice, on each occasion drawing himself closer into his corner; but Mr Toogood, by moving also, had still contrived to keep a morsel of that hat in sight.  He laughed cheerily at the landlord’s joke, and then he asked a sudden question—­looking at the morsel of that hat as he did so.  ‘Mr Stringer,’ said he, ’how do you pay your rent, and to whom do you pay it?’ There was immediately a jerk in the hat, and then it disappeared.  Toogood, stepping to the open door, saw that the red-nosed clerk had taken his hat off and was very busy at his accounts.

‘How do I pay my rent?’ said Mr Stringer, the landlord.  ’Well, sir, since this cursed gout has been so bad, it’s hard enough to pay it at all sometimes.  You ain’t here to look for it, sir, are you?’

‘Not I,’ said Toogood.  ‘It was only a chance question.’  He felt that he had nothing more to do with Mr Stringer, the landlord.  Mr Stringer, the landlord, knew nothing about Mr Soames’s cheque.  ’What’s the name of your clerk?’ said he.

‘The name of my clerk?’ said Mr Stringer.  ’Why do you want to know the name of my clerk?’

‘Does he ever pay the rent for you?’

’Well, yes; he does, at times.  He pays it into the bank for the lady as owns this house.  Is there any reason for you asking these questions, sir.  It isn’t usual, you know, for a stranger, sir.’

Toogood the whole of this time was standing with his eye upon the red-nosed man, and the red-nosed man could not move.  The red-nosed man heard all the questions and the landlord’s answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them.  ‘I am my cousin’s clerk,’ said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger.  ’My name is Dan Stringer, and I’m Mr John Stringer’s cousin.  I’ve lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I’m a’most as well known in Barchester as himself.  Have you anything to say to me, sir?’

‘Well, yes; I have,’ said Toogood.

‘I believe you’re the one of them attorneys from London?’ said Mr Dan Stringer.

‘That’s true.  I am an attorney from London.’

‘I hope there’s nothing wrong?’ said the gouty man, trying to get off his chair, but not succeeding.  ’If there is anything wronger than usual, Dan, do tell me.  Is there anything wrong, sir?’ and the landlord appealed piteously to Mr Toogood.