“Thank you, sir. Let me put the broken bottle in paper, Master Bywater. You will cut your fingers if you carry it loose in your pocket.”
“Oh, that be bothered!” answered Bywater. “Who cares for cut fingers?”
He pushed himself through Mrs. Jenkins’s customers, with as little ceremony as Roland Yorke might have used, and went flying towards the cathedral. The bell ceased as he entered. The organ pealed forth; and the dean and chapter, preceded by some of the bedesmen, were entering from the opposite door. Bywater ensconced himself behind a pillar, until they should have traversed the body, crossed the nave, and were safe in the choir. Then he came out, and made his way to old Jenkins the bedesman.
The old man, in his black gown, stood near the bell ropes, for he had been one of the ringers that day. Bywater noticed that his left hand was partially tied up in a handkerchief.
“Holloa, old Jenkins,” said he, sotte voce, “what have you done with your hand?”
“I gave it a nasty cut yesterday, sir, just in the ball of the thumb. I wrapped my handkerchief round it just now, for fear of opening it again, while I was ringing the bell. See,” said he, taking off the handkerchief and showing the cut to Bywater.
“What an old muff you must be, to cut yourself like that!”
“But I didn’t do it on purpose,” returned the old man. “We was ordered into the burial-ground to put it a bit to rights, and I fell down with my hand on a broken phial. I ain’t as active as I was. I say, though, sir, do you know that service has begun?”
“Let it begin,” returned careless Bywater. “This was the bottle you fell over, was it not? I found it on Joe’s mantelpiece, just now.”
“Ay, that was it. It must have laid there some time. A good three months, I know.”