Watkins contrived to express deep disapprobation, without wrinkling or contorting his countenance, a trick at which I always marveled.
"Quite so," assented Hugh. "She was an actress or something like that. Well, it's in the beggar's favor that he married her. But they can't come footling around here. I'd have the whole County up in arms against me."
We chatted on for a while, and then Watkins guided us to the upper story where three adjoining bedrooms had been made ready.
"The bathroom is across the 'all, sir," he informed me, stopping at my door on his way from Hugh's room. "My room is beside it. You 'ave only to ring, sir, if you wish anything. Good night, sir."
As he left, I reflected with a grin that I had not been so coddled since my schooldays as in the brief period following his adoption of Hugh and myself. For that was what it amounted to. For all his deference and servility, neither Hugh nor I would have dared to withstand any wish which Watkins gave serious expression to, and furthermore, he made us feel constantly that we were obligated to maintain a certain standard of conduct, which he, Watkins, might find satisfaction in.
I was up early the next morning, and a brief scouting tour revealed Nikka's room empty, while Hugh snoozed blissfully on. So I shaved and bathed, and descended the broad, shallow staircase into the entrance hall below. This wing, I noted, seemed to be shut off entirely from the remainder of the house. At any rate, there were no open corridors.
Watkins was arranging flowers in a luster bowl on a table under an oriel window, and I mentioned this fact to him as I stood on the lowest step, drinking in the wonderful satisfaction of a perfectly designed and furnished entrance, something that it takes the average architect ten years to learn how to do.
"You are right, sir," he answered. "There are corridors, but they are shut off, in order to save heat, sir, and prevent draughts. Since the death of the old lord, sir—Mister Hugh's grandfather—we 'ave 'ad such a small family that no occasion was found for all the rooms. And the old wing, sir, is a large 'ouse by itself."
"Well, that makes so much less for us to defend," I said.
"Beg pardon, sir?"