I will say this for him: he was the smartest aristocrat I've ever known.
Need I add that the Hazzards and the Smiths travelled second-class?
"Well, thank the Lord!" said I, as the ferry put off with the party, leaving me alone on the little landing. The rotten timbers seemed to echo the sentiment. At the top of the steep all the Schmicks were saying it, too; in the butler's pantry it was also being said; a score of workmen were grunting it; and the windlass that drew me up the hill was screaming it in wild, discordant glee. I repeated it once more when Britton returned from town and assured me that they had not missed the train.
"That's what I'd like to say, sir," said he.
"Well, say it," said I. And he said it so vociferously that I know it must have been heard in the remotest corners of heaven.
The merry song of the hammer and the sweet rasp of the saw greeted my delighted ear as I entered the castle. Men were singing and whistling for all they were worth; the air was full of music. It was not unlike the grand transformation scene in the pantomime when all that has been gloom and despondency gives way in the flash of an eye to elysian splendour and dazzling gaiety. 'Pon my soul, I never felt so exuberant in all my life. The once nerve-racking clangour was like the soothing strains of an invisible orchestra to my delighted senses. Ha! Ha! What a merry old world it is, after all!
Nearing my study, I heard an almost forgotten noise: the blithe, incessant crackle of a typewriting machine. Never have I heard one rattle so rapidly or with such utter garrulousness.
I looked in at the door. Over in his corner by the window Poopendyke was at work, his lanky figure hunched over the key-board, his head enveloped in clouds from a busy pipe, for all the world like a tugboat smothering in its own low-lying smoke. Sheets of paper were strewn about the floor. Even as I stood there hesitating, he came to the end of a sheet and jerked it out of the machine with such a resounding snap that the noise startled me. He was having the time of his life!
I stole away, unwilling to break in upon this joyful orgy.
Conrad, grinning from ear to ear, was waiting for me outside my bedroom door late in the day. He saluted me with unusual cordiality.