“Come to think of it, it was Cummerdown Hill. Yes—they said Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked much as usual, but more vacant perhaps, until he set eyes on me and then he gave a sort of start and said, ‘Don’t know you,’ he said. Like that.”
“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he look mad? I suppose he didn’t want to talk to you—after all the disagreeable things that have been said.”
“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know me?’ I said; ‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted your laundry on?’ Just like that—joking at him like. Quite kindly but—humorous. ‘I don’t know you,’ he says and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to me and sort of tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any laundry!’ he says—him to me, what was in the laundry business a dozen years before he married your poor mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. Albert Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ he says, ‘if you please....’”
“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected.
“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he would have it. Mad as a hatter on that. I tried to talk but what was the good of talking? I couldn’t get anything plain or straight out of him at all. Started threatening me with the bastinado—whatever that may be. I asked him to be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says to the attendant at last and the attendant took him away. And so we’re quit of him, Chrissie.”
“Quit of him!”
“Quit of him. What can anyone do?”
“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look frightened or ill-treated?”
“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him and he’s out of harm’s way.”
“You’re sure he looked—serene?”