He crept down the remainder of the stone steps, and placed his ear quite close to the kitchen window.
Mrs. Ragg was enjoying a little conversation to herself.
"Ah!" she said, "it's always the way—girls will be girls; but what I blame her for is, that she don't ask the colonel's leave at once, and say—'Sir, your disorderly has won my infections, and may he come here and take a cup of tea?'"
This was Greek to Todd.
"What is the old fool talking about," he muttered. "But I will soon give her a subject that will last for her life."
He now arrived at the door of the kitchen. It was very unlikely to be locked or otherwise fastened, so immediately after the young woman, who had left the house, and passed so close to him, Todd. Yet he listened for a few moments more, as Mrs. Ragg kept making observations to herself.
"Listeners hear no good of themselves, says the proverb, and at all events it was verified in this instance."
"Lor' a mussy," ejaculated Mrs. Ragg, "how my mind do run upon that horrid old ugly monster of a Todd to day. Well, I do hope I shall never look upon his frightful face again, and how awful he did squint, too. Dear me, what did the colonel say he had with his vision—could it be—a something afixity? No that isn't it."
"Obliquity!" said Todd, popping his head in at the kitchen door. "It was obliquity, and if you scream or make the least alarm, I'll skin you, and strew this kitchen with your mangled remains!"
Mrs. Ragg sank into a chair with a melo-dramatic groan, that would have made her fortune over the water in domestic tragedy if she could have done it so naturally. Todd kept his eye upon her. That basilisk-like eye, which had fascinated the good woman often, and this time it acted as a kind of spell, for truly might he have said, or rather might some one have said for him,