His watch corroborated the French clock.
"If papa heard this! I really can't the least conceive how it happened. I did not think it could have been eleven. Well, it is undoubtedly the oddest thing that ever happened in this house!"
In the morning, between ten and eleven, when Tom Sedley appeared again at the drawing-room windows, he learned from Charity, in her own emphatic style of narration, what had since taken place, which was not a great deal, but still was uncomfortably ambiguous.
She had visited her father at his breakfast in the study, and promptly introduced the subject of Tom Sedley, and he broke into this line of observation—
"I'd like to know what the deuce Tom Sedley means by talking of business to girls. I'd like to know it. I say, if he has anything to say, why doesn't he say it, that's what I say. Here I am. What has he to say. I don't object to hear him, be it sense or be it nonsense—out with it! That's my maxim; and be it sense or be it nonsense, I won't have it at second-hand. That's my idea."
Acting upon this, Miss Charity insisted that he ought to see Mr. Etherage; and, with a beating heart, he knocked at the study door, and asked an audience.
"Come in," exclaimed the resonant voice of the Admiral. And Tom Sedley obeyed.
The Admiral extended his hand, and greeted Tom kindly, but gravely.
"Fine day, Mr. Sedley; very fine, sir. It's an odd thing, Tom Sedley, but there's more really fine weather up here, at Hazelden, than anywhere else in Wales. More sunshine, and a deal less rain. You'd hardly believe, for you'd fancy on this elevated ground we should naturally have more rain, but it's less, by several inches, than anywhere else in Wales! And there's next to no damp—the hygrometer tells that. And a curious thing, you'll have a southerly wind up here when it's blowing from the east on the estuary. You can see it, by Jove! Now just look out of that window; did you ever see such sunshine as that? There's a clearness in the air up here—at the other side, if you go up, you get mist—but there's something about it here that I would not change for any place in the world."
You may be sure Tom did not dispute any of these points.