"'Ere she is," said Mrs. Bundle. "And what I say is this: things being what they are, I say, we might as well all be murdered in our beds or Get Took By Americans. It's all the same. Many's the time I've said to Mr. Budge, I've said, `Mr. Budge, you mark my words, there's no good a-going ter come of mucking about with them ghosters. 'Tain't in natur,' I've said, `for this 'ere tenement of clay (which we all is) to be alwis a-trying to beard them ghosters by their beards,' I says. Pop. You'd think we was Americans. Pop! And them ghosters, now―"
"Of course, Mrs. Bundle, of course," the chief constable said, soothingly. He turned to the little housemaid, who trembled in Mrs. Bundle's grip like a virgin ensnared by a witch. "You know something about the clock — er — ?'
"Martha, sir. Yes, sir. Truly."
"Tell us about it, Martha."
"They chews gum. Drat 'em!" cried Mrs. Bundle, with such ferocious malignancy that she gave a little hop.
"Eh?" said the chief constable. "Who?"
"They takes pies and hits people," said Mrs. Bundle. "Eee! Squee! Pop! Drat 'em!…"
The housekeeper showed a tendency to hold forth on this theme. She was not talking about the ghosters, it seemed, but about the Americans, whom she proceeded to describe as "nasty cowboy people with straw hats on." The ensuing monologue she delivered, shaking a bunch of keys in one hand and Martha in the other, was a trifle clouded in meaning, due to the listeners' inability to tell when she was referring to the Americans and when she was referring to the ghosters. She had concluded a lecture which seemed to deal with the ghosters' impolite habit of squirting one another in the face with soda-water from syphons, before Sir Benjamin summoned enough courage to interfere.
"Now, Martha, please go on. It was you who changed the clock?"
"Yes, sir. But he told me to do it, sir, and―"