“What’s the matter?” asked Scarlett.
“Ah, that’s what I want to know, sir. You didn’t hear it, of course, because you were out in the boat.”
“Hear what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said the gardener, mysteriously. “I’ve just come from the kitchen, where the servants was talking about it.”
“About what?”
“It, sir, it; I don’t know what it is. I told ’em it was howls, but I don’t think it was. Still, if you tell maid-servants as there’s something wrong in the house, they’ll either go out of the house or out of their skins.”
“Do you know what you are talking about, Nat?”
“Yes, sir. Course I do.”
“Well, then, just be a little plain, and don’t go smothering your words up as if they were seeds that you’d put in to come up in a month. Now, then, what is it?”
“You needn’t be quite so chuff with a man, Master Scarlett—a man as is trying to do his duty.”