Dodie was sweeping about the room, with the table cloth tied round her waist, forming a long train behind her, and an antimacassar thrown over her head for a veil, and the Curate himself amidst the shrieks of his little friends, was prowling about the floor, supposed to be a wild beast, trying to catch the children one by one.
Everything was in wild confusion, and Mrs. Green, the landlady, hearing the merriment from her dull little parlour at the back of the house, could not resist giving a peep into her lodger's room, to see a bit of the fun.
At the sight of her at the door, Claude sprang up from his humiliating position, and wiping the heat from his brow, said:
"I'm afraid Mrs. Green that we are making an unearthly noise, you've not a bad head to-day, I trust."
"Bless you, no Sir," said Mrs. Green, laughing, "It does one's heart good to see them enjoying themselves, poor little dears. I like a noise, it's cheery. 'Why Sally,' my husband has said many a time to me, when I've complained of the quiet of the country, 'I do believe,' says he, 'you'd like to live in an Inn, where people are always going and coming. One day, says he, when my ship comes in, I'll buy a Hotel at Yarmouth or Margate or some such place, and then you'll have as much noise as you like.'"
"You've had enough noise I expect for one day, any way," said Claude, suddenly becoming conscious that he was standing talking to his landlady in his shirt sleeves, and turning round to hunt for his coat among the confusion.
"Well as I tell you Sir, I like it, it's cheerful. Now that's what I like to think about Heaven," continued Mrs. Green, who at the slightest show of interest on the part of her listener, was inclined to become garrulous. "We shan't have no dull back parlours there I take it, not seeing a soul from one day to another, all shut up by ourselves like. We shall always be coming across new people there, and there'll be plenty to see and to hear. Think of old Rachel, Sir, her as lives at the bottom of the hill all by herself. She don't see a fresh face from one week's end to another. What a nice change it'll be for her now, that's to say if ever she gets there. I'm afraid she ain't fit for Heaven yet from all I hear."
The children interrupted in their game stood staring at the intruder, somewhat indignantly, while Dodie administered sundry impatient thumps on Claude's back.
"I must say," added Mrs. Green, "that that daughter of hers behaves shameful. Ever since she married the man Jones she has quite neglected her poor old mother, and if ever she gives her anything, you may be quite sure it ain't fit to eat, something they can't eat themselves because it's turned."
"What!" cried Geoffrey. "Does she do that to her own Mother?"