He bore the external
appearance of respectable poverty; he carried a gingham umbrella,
preserved in an oilskin case; he picked his steps, with the neatest
avoidance of all dirty places on the pavement; and he surveyed the scene
around him with eyes of two different colors--a bilious brown eye
on the lookout for employment, and a bilious green eye in a similar
predicament. In plainer terms, the stranger from Rosemary Lane was no
other than--Captain Wragge.
Outwardly speaking, the captain had not altered for the better since the
memorable spring day when he had presented himself to Miss Garth at the
lodge-gate at Combe-Raven. The railway mania of that famous year had
attacked even the wary Wragge; had withdrawn him from his customary
pursuits; and had left him prostrate in the end, like many a better
man. He had lost his clerical appearance--he had faded with the autumn
leaves. His crape hat-band had put itself in brown mourning for its own
bereavement of black. His dingy white collar and cravat had died
the death of old linen, and had gone to their long home at the
paper-maker's, to live again one day in quires at a stationer's shop.
A gray shooting-jacket in the last stage of woolen atrophy replaced the
black frockcoat of former times, and, like a faithful servant, kept the
dark secret of its master's linen from the eyes of a prying world.
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