“Somebody must sit with the gardener,” said Courtesy, when she came back from a successful search for an intact bed, into which, with the help of a housemaid, she had inserted the gardener.
“I will sit with him,” said the harsh voice of Mrs. Rust, as she rose from a seat where she had been sitting with an enormous paper bag held in a rigid hand. “I refuse to run about the streets with brandy. All the old cats are doing that.”
“Why, Mrs. Rust,” observed Courtesy, whose conventionality was not quite so striking after an earthquake as it had been upon the comparatively stable Atlantic. “I had clean forgotten that you existed.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Rust. “I was buying mangoes when the incident occurred. Perhaps the gardener would like a mango.”
“Perhaps he would. I am so glad to see that you don’t take the same view about the gardener as the——”
“I never take the same view,” barked Mrs. Rust. “Show me the boy’s room.”
So the gardener saw that poisonous hair advance along a shaft of sunlight that intruded through the broken shutter.
“Your jug and basin are broken,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful.”
“Oh, there are several things broken in this town,” he said feverishly. “Windows and necks and a heart or two.”
Mrs. Rust sat deliberately on a chair and burst into tears.