"You wouldn't, of course, in the—er—down here," said Mortimer. I was glad to notice him hesitate this time over the word "cellar" as applied to our artistic home.
"I know exactly what you are thinking," he went on kindly; "it is embarrassing to discuss household arrangements in public," and with a flourish of his arm, he marshalled his family and swept them out of the room, carefully shutting the door behind him.
Jane and I gazed awestruck at each other.
"We can't turn them away," said my wife. "Those five pairs of eyes would haunt me all night (Mortimer's and Emma's were, I presume, the ones omitted), and if the Zeppelins did come to-night how awful we should feel."
"We must be firm about it being only for to-night, then," I said. "We must consider Kate." (Kate is our cat.)
So it was arranged that we should give up our room and that Emma should share with Clara. I found the Mortimer family sitting in a crowded row on the antique bench in the hall, like players at dumb-crambo waiting for the word. Briefly I told them it was "stay." They all jumped up; Mortimer shook me cordially by the hand, and I believe Mrs. Mortimer kissed my wife.
True to the compact the refugees departed next morning, and we saw the last little Mortimer disappear upwards with unmixed relief. They were all back again, however, the following evening, this time encumbered with more articles towards "camping out." The expression was Mortimer's, not mine.
On the fourth evening Mortimer took me aside and told me confidentially that he could see this state of things was telling on us as much as on them, and that he thought the best plan would be for our two households to "chum together" while the Zeppelin menace lasted. (What fool said the war was going to last three years?) Never waiting for a reply, Mortimer went on to say that it really would not be so much trouble as it seemed at the first shock. He and I would be out all day, which would even up the numbers, and Emma would, of course, help. I much resented being estimated as equal to three-and-a-half Mortimers and had no delusions about Emma's helpfulness, but Mortimer's volubility had its usual stupefying effect. He carried the motion to his own satisfaction, and my wife told me that I behaved like an idiot.
We stood three days of this lunatic ménage. Every evening on returning from office I found more alien belongings blocking up my home. Mortimer boots strewed the scullery, their coats smothered the hat-stand, their toothbrushes filled the bathroom. Clara is a noble-hearted girl, but there was menace in her glance, and my wife was ageing before my eyes. Kate too had left us.
On the third evening when I came home I found a note sticking in the hall clothes-brush. "Meet me in the pantry," it said. I flew to the rendezvous, where Jane received me with her finger on her lip. Dragging me in, she managed with difficulty to close the door—our pantry is what you might call bijou—and, leaning against the sink, she unburdened her mind.