"I agree," I said. "I am under your orders henceforth, not you under mine."
Agathemer at once guided me into the house and upstairs to his rooms, for he inhabited the guest-suite next my rooms, which had been my uncle's.
"The first thing to do," he said, "is for both of us to eat heartily, for we do not know when we shall eat again. I have been choicy and whimmy about my eating since I came back here and mostly my meals have revolted me and I have left the triclinium practically unfed, whereas I have often been seized with imperative hunger between meals. I have an overabundant supply of all sorts of tempting cold viands up here."
And, in fact, in the room he used as a reading and writing room, on a side table, I found an inviting array of cold meats, jellies, cakes, and fancy breads, with an assortment of wines. We ate till we could eat no more, masticating our food carefully and taking wine in moderation.
Then Agathemer put up a liberal supply of bread and relishes in a small linen bag, obliterated all traces of our meal and presence and went into his dressing-room, where he stripped stark naked and rubbed himself down with a rough towel, carefully disposing of his garments in his wardrobes.
From one of his tables he took a small silver case containing flint, steel and tinder. Then we went into my rooms, where he stripped me, rubbed me down, and disposed of my garments as he had of his. My wallet he took pains to hide in the bottom of a chest, after emptying it and putting the contents about so that each article was hidden in a different place and none could be connected with the others or with the wallet. The little horn case with flint and steel he retained.
The ante-room to what had been my uncle's bed-room and was now mine, had on its walls trophies of hunting-spears and other weapons of the chase. Agathemer selected two knives for killing wounded stags, dependable implements, blade and shank one piece of fine steel, the handles of stag- horn, fastened on with copper rivets.
With the bag of food, the two knives and the two tinder boxes we went up my uncle's private stair to his library and reading room.
My uncle had had his own ideas as to nearly everything, usually much at variance with other people's ideas. As to building his ideas, perhaps, were less aberrant than his opinions on other subjects, but, certainly he was as tenacious of them as of his other notions.
He held, in the first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor of any house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He was equally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for a building to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three or more stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of silly extravagance and of a desire to appear different from one's neighbors. His villa, therefore, was of two stories only.