He saw, nodded, fell as an umbrella can fall, and kneeling, beat his forehead on the shut door. Penfentenyou slid the bolt.
The furniture men reinforced the two figures on the path, and advanced, spreading generously.
“Hadn't we better warn them up-stairs?” I suggested:
“No. I'll die first!” said Jimmy. “I'm pretty near it now. Besides, they called me names.”
I turned from the Artist to the Administrator.
“Ceteris paribus, I think we'd better be going,” said Penfentenyou, dealer in crises.
“Ta—take me with you,” said Jimmy. “I've no reputation to lose, but I'd like to watch 'em from—er—outside the picture.”
“There's always a modus vivendi,” Penfentenyou murmured, and tiptoed along the hall to a back door, which he opened quite silently. We passed into a tangle of gooseberry bushes where, at his statesmanlike example, we crawled on all fours, and regained the hedge.
Here we lay up, secure in our alibi.
“But your firm,”—the woman was wailing to the furniture removals men—“your firm promised me everything should be in yesterday. And it's to-day! You should have been here yesterday!”