“Getting me bearings, me lord,” explained Mr. Leek. “Which ain’t as easy as anyone might think which was reared in this Castle! What I do say, and will stand to, is that I never in all my puff see a ken which I’d liefer mill! That is, if I was a mill-ken, which, o’course, I ain’t. But there are them as I know as would slum this ken — ah, quicker than wipe your eye!”
“Break into it?” asked the Earl.
“Ah!” said Mr. Leek. “Well, look at all them jiggers and glazes, me lord!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What I should say,” Mr. Leek corrected himself, with an embarrassed cough behind his hand, “is them doors and winders, me lord! Any prig could open ’em, and no one a ha’porth the wiser!”
“Could you?”
“I could,”admitted Mr. Leek frankly, “which ain’t, however, to say I would! ”
“You need not, need you?” said Gervase, with flickering smile. “You, after all, are inside this ken!”
Mr. Leek, a little disconcerted, agreed to this, adding: “Besides which, milling kens ain’t my lay — properly speaking!”
“No, I fancy I have a shrewd suspicion of what your lay is,” said the Earl.