"But what were you doing on a ladder?"
"Never mind!" cried Mr. Carmody, regretting more bitterly than ever before in his life that his late brother Eustace had not lived and died a bachelor. "Don't keep saying What—What—What!"
"Well, why?" said Hugo, conceding the point. "Why were you climbing ladders?"
Mr. Carmody hesitated. His native intelligence returning, he perceived now that this was just what the great public would want to know. It was little use urging a human talking machine like his nephew to keep quiet and say nothing about this incident. In a couple of hours it would be all over Rudge. He thought swiftly.
"I fancied I saw a swallow's nest under the eaves."
"Swallow's nest?"
"Swallow's nest. The nest," said Mr. Carmody between his teeth, "of a swallow."
"Did you think swallows nested in July?"
"Why shouldn't they?"
"Well, they don't."