"Vam——" she began. "How do I do it?"
"Quit, clear out of here." He sprang from his chair and proceeded to pace up and down the room.
"Does that mean that I'm discharged?" she enquired, smiling.
"You heard what he said. They're up to their funny work. They missed us this time and got the rat and guinea-pig. They're always at it. I don't make a fuss; but I know. There'll be a bomb in my bed one of these nights. You'd better call a halt right here."
"Shall we get on with the letters, Mr. Dene?" said Dorothy quietly. "Father was a soldier."
For a moment he looked at her with his keen penetrating eyes, then swinging round to his table caught sight of the two dead rodents.
"Here, what the blazes does he want to leave these things here for," he cried irritably and, seizing a ruler, he swept them into the waste-paper basket.
For the rest of the day Dorothy was conscious that John Dene's heart was not in his work. Several times, when happening to look up unexpectedly, she found his eyes on her, and there was in them an anxiety too obvious to be dissimulated. John Dene was clearly worried.
"It's an extraordinary thing," Sage remarked later that afternoon to Colonel Walton, "that apparently no one has ever thought of encouraging a taste for apple-tart in guinea-pigs."