"Rebuild the chimneys, is it? Oh, with all my heart. Is there anything the matter with them?"
Andrew explained the imminence of our peril, and Flurry listened to him with his inscrutable eye on me.
"Well, it'll be some fun for you during the winter, Major, but be careful when you're cutting the ivy!"
I was betrayed into asking why.
"Because there's only it and the weather-slating keeping the walls standing."
"If I may presume to contradict one so much younger than myself," said old Mrs. Knox, "Shreelane is as well built a house as there is in the county." Her voice was, as ever, reminiscent of a bygone century and society; it was also keen-edged, as became a weapon of many wars, ancient and modern. She turned to me. "In the storm of '39 I remember that my father said that if Shreelane fell not a house in Ireland would stand. Every one in the house spent that night in the kitchen."
"May be that was nothing new to them," suggested Flurry.
Mrs. Knox regarded her grandson steadfastly and continued her story. It has already been noted that when he and she were of the same company they considered no other antagonist worthy of their steel.
"It was my great-grandfather who built Shreelane in honour of his marriage," she went on. "He married a Riggs of Castle Riggs, a cousin of the celebrated Major Apollo—and thereby hangs a tale!" She blinked her eyes like an old rat, and looked round at each of us in turn. I felt as if I were being regarded through a telescope, from the standpoint of a distant century.
"They knew how to build in those days," she began again. "The basement story of Shreelane is all vaulted."