"'Eaps of questions, Miss Silver, as bold as brass, all about Sir
Everard and my lady—our young lady, you know. Shall I fetch him up?"
"Certainly."
There chanced to be no other visitor at the Court, and Sybilla received
Mr. Parmalee with infinite smiles and condescension.
"Beg your pardon, miss," he said, politely; "sorry to put you to so much trouble, but I calculated on seeing this old pile before I left these parts, and as they told me down at the tavern this was the day—"
"It is not the slightest trouble, I assure you," Miss Silver interposed. "I am only too happy to have a stranger come and break the quiet monotony of our life here. And, besides, it affords me double pleasure to make the acquaintance of an American—a people I intensely admire. You are the first I ever had the happiness of meeting."
"Want to know!" said Mr. Parmalee, in a tone betokening no earthly emotion whatever. "It's odd, too. Plenty folks round our section come across; but I suppose they didn't happen along down here. Splendid place this; fine growing land all round; but I see most of it is let run wild. If all that there timber was cut down and the stumps burned out and the ground turned into pasture, you hain't no idea what an improvement it would be. But you Britishers don't go in for progress and that sort of thing. This old castle, now—it's two hundred years old, I'll be bound!"
"More than that—twice as old. Will you come and look at the pictures now? Being an artist, of course you will like to see the pictures first."
Mr. Parmalee followed the young lady to the long picture-gallery, his hands still in his pockets, whistling softly to himself, and eying everything.
"Must have cost a sight of money, all these fixings," he remarked. "I know how them statues and busts reckons up. This here baronet must be a powerful rich man?"
"He is," said Miss Silver, quietly.