“Oh!” said Paul, dubiously. Somehow, the Shark never had suggested to him one of musical tastes. “So you’re going in for it? Oh, yes! And it’ll be—er—er—violin, or piano, or—or——”
“Shucks, no!” The Shark’s lip curled scornfully. “What’d I want to play anything for? And tunes? Bah! I can’t tell one from another. And what’s the use of bothering to learn to play one instrument, when you can have a whole band going for you by just starting up a phonograph? But they tell me there’s really some good stuff under it all—real mathematics, I mean, when you get into counterpoint, or whatever it is they call it. So I’m going to take it up when I have a little leisure.”
“Oh, I see—I get you,” said Paul. Then he was reminded by another dash of rain that this was hardly a time for gossip in the open. “Now, though, how about that house?”
“Well, we’ll look for it,” said the Shark; and set off in the direction in which he believed the building to be.
Paul followed him. He noticed that his guide went more slowly than before, and that he veered from left to right, and then from right to left, as if desiring to cover a wider strip of territory. The brush was not especially dense, but it was thick enough to limit the field of view, so that often it was impossible to see more than a few score yards ahead. Suddenly, however, the Shark pulled up.
“Huh! That’ll be the place, I guess,” he announced.
Paul made out dimly the line of a roof; but what with the rain, and the trees, he could do little more than make it out. It was not, in fact, until he and the Shark were close to the building that they obtained a fair view of it.
The house, evidently, was very old. So much could be guessed from the mossy roof and weatherbeaten walls. Midway of the ridge-pole rose a squat and very thick chimney. In front the house showed two stories, but in the rear the roof ran in a great sweep from the ridge-pole to within a couple of feet of the tops of the ground-floor windows. There was no porch, and, indeed, the house was most severely plain in all its outlines.
“Huh! Old timer,” the Shark observed. “And nobody home!”
Presumably it had been a good many years since anybody had been at home there. Still, the place was not utterly neglected in appearance. The stout shutters at the windows were closed, and the front door was boarded up; what was once the front yard had been kept clear of brush.