She checked him with an outstretched hand as he turned to go, and laid her finger on her lips as a signal for absolute silence.
‘Don’t fear me,’ said the old man; ‘I’m nae chatterbox, wi’ business like this afoot.’
CHAPTER IX.—IN WHICH MISCHIEF IS BREWING.
It was late in the forenoon of the same day when Mr. Blake rose from his bed in the tenement to which he gave the sonorous and impressive title of Blake’s Hall—a tumbledown hut of two stories, which long years of neglect had reduced to a condition of almost complete ruin. The ground-floor was occupied by Blake himself; the upper portion by an ancient peasant woman, who acted as his cook, housemaid, caterer, and general factotum. There was not a whole pane of glass or an unbroken article of furniture in the whole building, and the little plot of ground in which it stood was a wilderness of stones and weeds.
Biddy was made aware of her employer’s awakening in the fashion familiar to her for years past—by his roaring at the full stretch of his lungs for a draught of whisky. That draught despatched, he arose, and proceeded with shaking limbs to shave and dress. He was still occupied with his toilet when the voice of the elder Conseltine was heard in the outer room.
‘Give him a glass of punch,’ Blake called out to Biddy. ‘I’ll be with him in the squazing of a lemon. So,’ he continued, reeling out of his bedroom a minute later, ‘ye’ve brought the cub with ye, though I forbade ye.’
Richard, sullenly flicking at his boot with his riding-whip, looked at Blake from under his lowering eyebrows, but took no further heed of his ambiguous welcome. Blake unsteadily poured out a second bumper of spirit, and the glass rattled against his teeth as he drained it.
‘And what’s the news with his lordship this day?’ he asked.