“General, I was not aware that you belonged to the family. But this way, Sir; this way, if you please. There is lath and plaster to that wall, and a crack in the panel of the door, Sir. But here is a room where I keep my jams, with double brick and patent locks, from sweet-toothed lodgers. The 'scutcheon goes over the key-hole, General. Perhaps you will see to that, while I roll up the carpet outside; and then, if any retainers come, you will hear their footsteps.”
“Bless the woman, what a temper she has!” whispered the Major, in dread of her ears. “Is she gone, Erema? She wants discipline.”
“Yes, she is gone,” I said, trying to be lightsome; “but you are enough to frighten any one.”
“So far from that, she has quite frightened me. But never mind such trifles. Erema, since I saw you I have discovered, I may almost say, every thing.”
Coming upon me so suddenly, even with all allowance made for the Major's sanguine opinion of his own deeds, this had such effect upon my flurried brain that practice alone enabled me to stand upright and gaze at him.
“Perhaps you imagined when you placed the matter in my hands, Miss Castlewood,” he went on, with sharp twinkles from the gables of his eyes, but soft caresses to his whiskers, “that you would be left in the hands of a man who encouraged a crop of hay under his feet. Never did you or any body make a greater mistake. That is not my character, Miss Castlewood.”
“Why do you call me 'Miss Castlewood' so? You quite make me doubt my own right to the name.”
Major Hockin looked at me with surprise, which gladdened even more than it shamed me. Clearly his knowledge of all, as he described it, did not comprise the disgrace which I feared.
“You are almost like Mrs. Strouss to-day,” he answered, with some compassion. “What way is the wind? I have often observed that when one female shows asperity, nearly all the others do the same. The weather affects them more than men, because they know nothing about it. But to come back—are you prepared to hear what I have got to tell you?”
I bowed without saying another word. For he should be almost the last of mankind to give a lecture upon irritation.