The scissors dropped on the floor with a crash, and Wimble stood, wide-eyed, and harrowing his thin whiskers with his comb.
“What’s the matter?”
“I beg pardon, sir,” faltered the barber; “you said—”
“That I’d tell Mr Gartram.”
“I—I—I beg your pardon, Mr Lisle, sir; don’t do that. Mr Gartram’s my landlord—a hard man, sir, in paint and repairs; and if he knew that I’d said such a thing about him being robbed or murdered, why, I do believe, sir, he’d turn me out of house and home.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Chris gruffly. “Lesson to you to hold your tongue.”
This was so decided a rebuff that Wimble frowned, picked up his scissors, and went on snipping in silence for nearly half a minute, when the desire to talk, or habit of using his jaws in concert with the opening and shutting of his scissors, mastered him again.
“If I might be so bold as ask, sir, Mrs Sarson quite well?”
“Yes, quite well.”
“Most amiable woman, sir,” said the barber, “Her house always seems to me as if it might take a prize—so beautifully kept, sir—so delicately clean.”