“If you wouldn’t mind, sir, being sure that the candles are well out.”
“Oh, of course; of course.”
“And it’s a very hot night, sir.”
“Yes, madam; we have found that out.”
“So if you’ll be kind enough to shut and slip the bolt of the front door I’ll leave it for you to do so when you go up to bed.”
“Certainly, Mrs Champernowne, certainly. Once more, good-night.”
Their landlady smiled benevolently on both, and the next minute they heard the little old staircase creaking beneath her tread, this being followed by the cracking of the boards in the little room over the kitchen, the visitors both listening till all was silent again.
Somehow as Rodd sat opposite to his uncle, his head seemed to be unusually heavy, and he rested more and more upon his two thumbs, which he had placed for support beneath his chin.
There was a faint pinging sound, the trumpeting of a gnat flitting about the room, and then the deep boom of a beetle somewhere outside the open window. There was a hot delicious odour, too, floating in over the flowers in the garden, a portion of whose scent the warm air seemed to be taking up to mingle with that which it had swept off the moor.
And then as Rodd listened and gazed across the table between the two candles, whose tops were growing tiny brown mushrooms as they silently asked to be snuffed, it seemed to the boy that his uncle’s face looked dim and misty, and then that it swelled and swelled and began to float up like a faintly seen balloon, till it died right away. And all was still but the um-um-um of the great beetle or chafer which had passed in through the window, and began circling round just below the whitewashed ceiling, against which its wings brushed from time to time with a faint fizz, till all at once Rodd started up, for his uncle exclaimed—