“But—”
“Hold on! He’s been in bed a couple of days with a feverish cold, caught through lying in damp sheets as his mother had forgot to air. She brings him no supper to-night. He calls out. No answer. Then he gets up to go down-stairs and see what’s happened, and he slips on th’ stairs and breaks his knee, or puts it out or summat. Sat there hours, seemingly! Couldn’t walk neither up nor down.”
“And was your—wife—was Mrs.—?”
“Dead drunk in the parlour, Sam’l.”
“But the servant?”
“Servant!” Daniel Povey laughed. “We can’t keep our servants. They won’t stay. YOU know that.”
He did. Mrs. Daniel Povey’s domestic methods and idiosyncrasies could at any rate be freely discussed, and they were.
“And what have you done?”
“Done? Why, I picked him up in my arms and carried him upstairs again. And a fine job I had too! Here! Come here!”
Daniel strode impulsively across the shop—the counterflap was up—and opened a door at the back. Samuel followed. Never before had he penetrated so far into his cousin’s secrets. On the left, within the doorway, were the stairs, dark; on the right a shut door; and in front an open door giving on to a yard. At the extremity of the yard he discerned a building, vaguely lit, and naked figures strangely moving in it.