“Oh, they’ve rigged up a practicable bridge for one person at a time down where the old one stood. Salt crossed it unscathed. (Very well, my dear. Carry on. I’ll catch up with you.)”
“Yes?”
“Two nights ago the road-mender saw Sir Brooke as sure as taxes, crossing the bridge and proceeding up the road toward the House. (I agree with you, my dear. It’s infernally dull. But Carlyle was a great man.)”
“Great Scott! We’re closing in on him.”
“I wish they’d leave off tracing that old boy,” said a peevish young feminine voice from the corner. “He’s old enough to take care of himself. I wish somebody’d trace my tennis balls.”
“Why,” I smiled, “what’s happened to them?”
“The usual death,” said Lib. “Bob knocked both of ’em into the Water this afternoon and presto vanisho! Now we can’t play any more until somebody goes into town and pries a few loose from the corner store.”
“Gee, he’s got nerve, that butler,” urged Bob, turning his plus-foured self toward me, and more toward the light, so that his somewhat pug-like countenance showed the full measure of affronted innocence. “You know what he said, Mr. Bannerlee? He said that it served us right because we played tennis so soon after Mr. Cosgrove died—Cosgrove!”
“It served you right because you thought my side of the court was in the next county,” Lib snapped. “Now what can we do, except read?”
“There are worse things,” I offered mildly.