Boys -- Fiction; Country homes -- England -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction
It took exactly half an hour to get Lord Chickney from that enquiry to
the telephone and even then he was still far from clear about the matter
in hand. Captain Douglas got in most of the facts, but he could not
eliminate an idea that it all had to do with Madeleine. Whenever he
tried to say clearly that she was entirely outside the question, the
general patted his shoulder and looked very wise and kind and said, “My
dear Boy, I quite understand; I _quite_ understand. Never mention a
lady. _No._”
So they started at last rather foggily—so far as things of the mind
went, though the sun that day was brilliant—and because of engine
trouble in Port Street the general’s hansom reached Tenby Little Street
first and he got in a good five minutes preparing the Lord Chancellor
tactfully and carefully before the bicycle and its trailer came upon the
scene....
§ 4
Candler had been packing that morning with unusual solicitude for a
week-end at Tulliver Abbey. His master had returned from the catastrophe
of Shonts, fatigued and visibly aged and extraordinarily cross, and
Candler looked to Tulliver Abbey to restore him to his former self.
Nothing must be forgotten; there must be no little hitches, everything
from first to last must go on oiled wheels, or it was clear his Lordship
might develop a desperate hostility to these excursions, excursions
which Candler found singularly refreshing and entertaining during the
stresses of the session. Tulliver Abbey was as good a house as Shonts
was bad; Lady Checksammington ruled with the softness of velvet and the
strength of steel over a household of admirably efficient domestics, and
there would be the best of people there, Mr. Evesham perhaps, the
Loopers, Lady Privet, Andreas Doria and Mr. Pernambuco, great silken
mellow personages and diamond-like individualities, amidst whom Lord
Moggeridge’s mind would be restfully active and his comfort quite
secure. And as far as possible Candler wanted to get the books and
papers his master needed into the trunk or the small valise. That habit
of catching up everything at the last moment and putting it under his
arm and the consequent need for alert picking up, meant friction and
nervous wear and tear for both master and man.
Lord Moggeridge rose at half-past ten—he had been kept late overnight by
a heated discussion at the Aristotelian—and breakfasted lightly upon a
chop and coffee. Then something ruffled him; something that came with
the letters. Candler could not quite make out what it was, but he
suspected another pamphlet by Dr. Schiller. It could not be the chop,
because Lord Moggeridge was always wonderfully successful with chops.
Candler looked through the envelopes and letters afterwards and found
nothing diagnostic, and then he observed a copy of _Mind_ torn across
and lying in the waste-paper basket.
“When I went out of the room,” said Candler, discreetly examining this.
“Very likely it’s that there Schiller after all.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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