I found a sympathiser in Mrs. Rattray.
“It’s likely the two of them will be suffocated with foul air,” she said, “and Bates wanting to take the bird-cage with the canary in it, because he read in the papers they took them down after explosions in the mines, when all the poor women would be waiting on the top. ‘You’d be the easier spared of the two,’ I told him, and the dirt they’ll be bringing up on their feet—they’re like a pair of children, sir.”
“No better indeed, Mrs. Rattray. Perhaps the door mat from the hall?”
I escaped into the study, only to be driven out by the muffled sound of blows and horrid scrapings of the shovel. I retreated to the pigeon-loft.
This kind of thing went on all that day and the next.
Edmund was late for all meals and brought to them an earthy smell. Bates was never available when I wanted him.
Edmund reported the passage as being evidently of great antiquity, and quite roomy. It was only blocked in places, he said, and they had had no difficulty in clearing these so far.
“We are propping the roof where it has fallen in or looks dicky,” he said, “otherwise we should have been through by now. I’m sure we’ll find the other opening all right because the air’s pretty fresh and we’ve found a lot of bats hanging up. You must come down to-morrow.”
“No thanks, the bats have decided me. There is between them and me what Lamb calls an ‘imperfect sympathy.’”
“Oh, rot! We’ll get rid of them for you.”