Why is Mr. Nuttel visiting the country?

Framton
Nuttel's purpose in sojourning in the country and for calling on the Sappletons are covered
quickly in two passages. When he presents himself he is greeted by fifteen-year-old Vera
Sappleton, who explains that she is standing in for her aunt who will be down shortly.

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should
duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come.
Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total
strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be
undergoing.

Vera has just enough time to tell Framton her
utterly false ghost story before her aunt arrives. Then he gives Mrs. Sappleton some further
details about his health.

"The doctors agree in
ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the
nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably
widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least
detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they
are not so much in agreement," he continued.

Framton's sister knew some people in the area, but not really very well. She had
insisted on giving her brother letters of introduction to these people, probably under the
assumption that such isolated country dwellers would welcome visitors from the big city of
London. The sister had been staying with the local vicar, which made it impossible for anyone
who received her letter of introduction to fail at least to invite Framton to tea. That is
evidently Mrs. Sappleton's intention. It is nearly tea time, and she is awaiting the return pf
her husband and her two brothers from their customary bird-hunting, which seems to be all they
ever do and all they ever talk about..

The author establishes that Framton is
seeking "complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the
nature of violent physical exercise" because the poor man is going to experience just the
opposite when he sees the men who have supposedly been dead for three years approaching the open
window, all of them carrying guns. The story is told in such a way that the reader does not
realize why Framton panics and goes running out of the house and down the country road until
Mrs. Sappleton's husband enters and shows that he is not a ghost when he asks:

"Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"