Clumsily, but with the best of intentions, they brought him to his senses, and in half an hour or so he was sufficiently recovered to be taken home. There was a twitching of the lips that might have passed for a sarcastic smile, as he heard the proposal to convey him to his house; but he only gave his street and number, and lay silently back in the carriage, supported by his friends, two of whom insisted upon seeing him safely to his own abode.
"Is this the place? Why, it is all shut up!" exclaimed one of these gentlemen as the driver drew up before the dusty steps.
Mrs. Hunt's orders were that the entrance to her mansion should present the most desolate air possible during her absence. It had "an aristocratical look in the summer time, when everybody but nobodies was rusticating."
Again that singular contortion of the mouth, and the master (?) of the forlorn-looking habitation prepared to descend, fumbling in his pocket for his pass-key.
"I am obliged to you, gentlemen, for your great kindness, and will—not—trouble—you—longer."
In trying to raise his hand to his hat for a bow, the ghastly hue again overspread his face, and he staggered. Without further parley his two aids laid hold of him, one on each side, and supported him into the house, up one, two flights of linen-draped stairs, to a back bedroom.
Mrs. Hunt would have let her husband faint on the sidewalk before she would have received company in that chamber in its present condition; for the handsomest articles of furniture stood covered up in another apartment, and their place was supplied by a plain bureau, wash-stand and bed belonging to the boys' room, a story higher up. The wisdom of this precaution was manifest in the signs of neglect and slovenliness displayed on all sides. One could have written his name in the dust upon the glass; there was dirt in every corner and under each chair and table; the wash-basin was partly full of dirty suds, and the towels and counterpane shockingly dingy.
These things were not remarked by the intruders until they had got their charge to bed, resisted no longer by him, for he began to comprehend his inability to help himself.
"There is no one besides ourselves on the premises, not even a servant," one of them said apart to his associate, after a brief absence from the room. "If you will stay with him until I come back I will go for a doctor."
The invalid caught the last word.