I took up a chair softly, and set it down between the hatch and the fireplace, so that while warming my knees I could catch any word spoken more than ordinary loud on the other side of the wall. The chambermaid stirr’d the fire briskly, and moved about singing as she fetch’d down bottles and glasses from the dresser——
“Lament ye maids an’ darters For constant Sarah Ann, Who hang’d hersel’ in her garters All for the love o’ man, All for the—”
She was pausing, bottle in hand, to take the high note: but hush’d suddenly at the sound of the voices singing in the room upstairs—
“Vivre en tout cas C’est le grand soulas Des honnetes gens!”
“That’s the foreigners,” said the chambermaid, and went on with her ditty——
“All for the love of a souljer Who christening name was Jan.”
A volley of oaths sounded through the buttery hatch.
“—And that’s the true-born Englishmen, as you may tell by their speech. ’Tis pretty company the master keeps, these days.”
She was continuing her song, when I held up a finger for silence. In fact, through the hatch my ear had caught a sentence that set me listening for more with a still heart.
“D—n the Captain,” the landlord’s gruff voice was saying; “I warn’d ’n agen this fancy business when sober, cool-handed work was toward.”