He sat down in the chair, offered him, by the fire, putting his hat in the corner behind. Miss Rye, after saluting him, had resumed work, and sat with her face turned to the table, partially away from his view; Mrs. Jones, at the other side of the table, faced him.
"Where's Jones?" asked Mr. Butterby.
"Jones is off, as usual," replied Jones's wife. "No good to ask where he is after the shop's shut; often not before it."
It was an unlucky question, bringing back all the acrimony which the violets had partially soothed away. Mr. Butterby coughed, and began talking of recent events in a sociable, friendly manner, just as if he had been Mrs. Jones's brother, and never in his life heard of so rare an animal as a detective.
"It's an uncommon annoying thing to have had happen in your house, Mrs. Jones! As if it couldn't as well have took place in anybody else's! There's enough barristers lodging in the town at assize time, I hope. But there! luck's everything. I'd have given five shillings out of my pocket to have stopped it."
"So would I; for his sake as well as for mine," was Mrs. Jones's answer. And she seized one of the parcels of stockings and jerked off the string.
"Have you had any more dreams, Miss Rye?"
"No," replied Miss Rye, holding her stitching closer to the light for a moment. "That one was enough."
"Dreams is curious things; not to be despised," observed crafty Mr. Butterby; than whom there was not a man living despised dreams, as well as those who professed to have them, more than he. "But I've knowed so-called dreams to be nothing in the world but waking thoughts. Are you sure that one of yours was a dream, Miss Rye?"
"I would rather not talk of it, if you please," she said. "Talking cannot bring Mr. Ollivera back to life."