“Then why didn’t you come away?”
“Really I don’t know. I understood that it had something to do with a party, but I think the fact is that Mary was too lazy to look after the servants while they packed up.”
“Perhaps she had some attraction there,” suggested the Colonel, with an anxiety which might have been obvious to a more skilled observer.
“Attraction! What do you mean?” asked Porson.
“Mean, you old goose? Why, what should I mean? A young man, of course.”
“Oh! I see. No, I am sure it was nothing of that sort. Mary won’t be bothered with young men. She is too lazy; she just looks over their heads till they get tired and go away. I am sure it was the packing, or, perhaps, the party. But what are you staring at, Colonel? Is there anything wrong?”
“No, no; only that wonderful window of yours—the one filled with bottle-glass—which always reminds me of a bull’s-eye lantern standing on a preserved-beef tin, or the top of a toy lighthouse.”
Porson peered at the offending window through his spectacles.
“Certainly, now you mention it, it does look a little odd from here,” he said; “naked, rather. You said so before, you remember, and I told them to plant the shrubs; but while I was away they let every one of the poor things die. I will ask my architect, Jenkins, if he can’t do anything; it might be pulled down, perhaps.”
“Better leave it alone,” said the Colonel, with a sniff. “If I know anything of Jenkins he’d only put up something worse. I tell you, John, that where bricks and mortar are concerned that man’s a moral monster.”