“Can I see Mr. Todhetley?”
“You see him now. I am he. Will you tell me your business?”
“Captain Copperas owes me a small account, and I want it settled.”
The avowal put Tod in a rage; and he showed it. “A small account! Is this a proper time to come bothering gentlemen for your small accounts—when folks are gone to bed, or going?”
“Last time I came in the afternoon. Perhaps that was the wrong time? Any way, Captain Copperas put me off, saying I was to call some evening, and he’d pay it.”
“And I’ll thank you to betake yourself off again now. How dare you disturb people at this unearthly hour! As to Captain Copperas, I tell you that he is no longer here.”
“Then I should say that Captain Copperas was a swindler.”
Tod turned on his heel at the last words, and the men went away, their retreating footsteps echoing on the road. I thought I heard the grenadier’s window being shut, so the noise must have disturbed her.
“Swindlers themselves!” cried Tod, as he fastened the house-door. “I’ll lay you a guinea, Johnny, they were two loose fellows trying to sneak inside and see what they could pick up.”
Nevertheless, in the morning he asked the grenadier whether it was true that such men had come there after any small account. And the grenadier resented the supposition indignantly. Captain Copperas owed no “small accounts” that she knew of, she said; and she had lived with him and Miss C. ever since they came to Cray Bay. She only wished she had seen the men herself last night; she would have answered them. And when, upon this, I said I thought I had heard her shut her window down, and supposed she had been listening, she denied it, and accused me of being fanciful.