He closed the window, but stood looking out.
“You’d better take care, you two, that my lady don’t catch you, or there’ll be such a devil of a row. He’s—he’s going down into the area. Well, well, well, I shan’t tell tales. He—he—he! Hi—hi—hi!” he chuckled, sitting down and nursing his leg. “I remember when I was about twenty, and Dick Jerrard and I—he’s Lord Marrowby now, and a sober judge!—when we got over the wall at a boarding-school to see pretty Miss Vulliamy. Oh, dear, dear, dear, those were days. They preach and talk a deal now about being wicked, but it was very nice. I used to be a devil of a wicked fellow when I was young, and—and flirted terribly, while lately I’ve been as good as gold, and, damme, I haven’t been half so happy.”
He stopped rubbing his leg for a while.
“Everything’s at sixes and sevens, damme, that it is. I’m nearly famished, that I am. If it hadn’t been for that bit of chicken I should have been quite starved. Her ladyship’s too bad, that she is. Cold boiled sole, rice pudding, and half a glass of hock in a tumbler of water. I can’t stand it, that I can’t. Damme, I’ll make a good dinner to-night, that I will, if I die for it. I’ll—I’ll—I’ll, damme, I’ll kick over the traces for once in a way. Tom will help me, I know. He’s a good boy, Tom is, and he’ll see that I have a glass of port, and—damme, where’s Maude and her ladyship, and why isn’t dinner ready? and—eh—what?—what the devil’s that. There’s something wrong.”
For at that moment a piercing shriek rang through the house, and there was the sound of a heavy fall upon the floor.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Tom Diphoos stays out Late.
“Half thought I should have seen Charley Melton here; perhaps he has started for Italy after all,” said Tom, who had gone straight to Barker’s and engaged in a game of pool. “Might have stirred him up, but he don’t seem to mind it a bit. Well, no wonder, seeing how he was treated.”