The faces were inexorable.

"I declare, friends, the pore chap is drippin' wet.

Sich a tiresome v'yage, too, as it must ha' been from Plymouth, i' this weather! I dunno how we came to forget to invite en nigher the hearth.
Well, as I was a-sayin'-- " He stopped to search for his hat beneath the settle.

Producing a large crimson handkerchief from the crown, he mopped his brow slowly.
"The cur'ous part o't, naybours, is the sweatiness that comes over a man, this close weather." "I'm waiting for your answer," put in the stranger, knitting his brows.
"Surely, surely, that's the very thing I was comin' to.

The answer, as you may say, is this--but step a bit nigher, for there's lashins o' room--the answer, as far as that goes, is what I make to you, sayin'-- that if you wasn' so passin' wet, may be I'd blurt out what I had i' my mind.