It was this gloom that prevented me from seeing, at first, that there was anybody in the kitchen but cook, who was busily beating up batter for light cakes in a big, yellow, white-lined bowl.
"Is the tea made?" I said.
It was not; the silver teapot, with the tea in it, was being heated on the hob.
I moved to take up the singing kettle. It was then that a tall man's form that had been sitting on a settle on the other side of the fire rose and came towards me.
The red glow of the fire through the bars shone on the silver buttons and on the laurel-green cloth and on the high boots of a chauffeur's livery. Of course! This was the man who had driven over the people who had come in the car.
But above the livery a voice spoke, a voice that I knew, a voice that I could hardly believe was speaking to me here.
"Allow me," said this softly inflected Irish voice. And the kettle was gently but firmly taken out of my hand by the hand of—the Honourable James Burke.
I gave such a start of surprise that it is a mercy I did not jolt against that kettle and send a stream of scalding hot water over the laurel-green-cloth-clad knees of the man before me.
And I said exactly what people always say in meloramas when they are surprised at meeting anybody—thus showing that melodrama is not always so utterly unlike real life.
I cried "You!"