The boy considered a moment, then said stoutly, "I wouldn't go in there again. I'd lock the door and throw away the key."
"Wait till your time comes! You'll find that is precisely what you can't do."
"Then I'd fetch them out, once and for all, and bury them."
The carriage had turned in at the lodge gate. Soon a long, low, white house and range of domed conservatories came into view.
"Heroic remedies!" Ormiston remarked, amused at the boy's vehemence. "But no doubt they do succeed now and then. To tell you the truth, Dick, I have been thinking of something of the kind myself. Only I'm afraid I shall need somebody to help me in carrying out so extensive a funeral."
"Anybody would be glad enough to help you," Richard declared, with a strong emphasis on the pronoun.
"Ah! but the bother is anybody can't help one. Only one person in all this great rough and tumble of a world can really help one. And often one finds out who that person is a little bit too late. However, here we are. Perhaps we shall know more about it all in the next half hour, if these good people are at home."
In point of fact the good people in question were not at home. Ormiston, holding reins and whip in one hand, felt for his card-case.
"So we've had our journey for nothing you see, Dick," he said.
And to Richard the words sounded regretful. Moreover, the drama of this expedition seemed to him shorn of its climax. He knew there should be something more, and pushed for it.