‘Did nothing happen to attract your attention between the young lady’s going back into the house and the coming out of this young man?’
Miss Coleman cogitated.
‘Now you mention it there did,—though I should have forgotten all about it if you hadn’t asked me,—that comes of your not letting me tell the tale in my own way. About twenty minutes after the young woman had gone in someone put up the blind in the front room, which that young man had dragged right down, I couldn’t see who it was for the blind was between us, and it was about ten minutes after that that young man came marching out.’
‘And then what followed?’
‘Why, in about another ten minutes that Arab party himself comes scooting through the door.’
‘The Arab party?’
‘Yes, the Arab party! The sight of him took me clean aback. Where he’d been, and what he’d been doing with himself while them there people played hi-spy-hi about his premises I’d have given a shilling out of my pocket to have known, but there he was, as large as life, and carrying a bundle.’
‘A bundle?’
‘A bundle, on his head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It was a great thing, you never would have thought he could have carried it, and it was easy to see that it was as much as he could manage; it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like a snail,—it took him quite a time to get to the end of the road.’
Mr Lessingham leaped up from his seat, crying,