"I remember. I'd just got the idea. I happened to know, you see, that Bennett and Mortimer were both frightfully keen on getting Windles for the summer, but my mother wouldn't hear of it and gave them both the miss-in-baulk. It suddenly occurred to me that mother was going to be away in America all the summer, so why shouldn't I make a private deal, let them the house, and make it a stipulation that I was to stay there to look after things? And, to cut a long story short, that's what I did." "You let Windles?" "Yes. Old Bennett was down on the dock at Southampton to meet Wilhelmina, and I fixed it up with him then and there. He was so bucked at the idea of getting the place that he didn't kick for a moment at the suggestion that I should stick on at the house. Said he would be delighted to have me there, and wrote out a fat check on the spot. We hired a car and drove straight over--it's only about twenty miles from Southampton, you know,--and we've been there ever since. Bennett sent a wire to Mortimer, telling him to join us, and he came down next day." He paused, and looked at Sam as though desiring comment. Sam had none to offer. "Why do you say you're in a hole?" he asked. "It seems to me as though you had done yourself a bit of good. You've got the check, and you're in the same house with Miss Hubbard. What more do you want?" "But suppose mother gets to hear about it?" "Well?" "She'd be sorer than a sunburned neck." "Probably. But why should she hear of it?" "Ah! I'm coming to that." "Is there some more of the story?" "Quite a lot." "Charge on," said Sam resignedly. Eustace Hignett fixed a despondent gaze on the shingle, up which the gray waves were crawling with their usual sluggish air of wishing themselves elsewhere. A rain-drop fell down the back of his neck, but he did not notice it. "It was the weather that really started it," he said. "Started what?" "The trouble. What sort of weather have you been having here?" "I haven't noticed." "Well, down at Windles it has been raining practically all the time, and after about a couple of days it became fairly clear to me that Bennett and Mortimer were getting a bit fed. I mean to say, having spent all their lives in America, don't you know, they weren't used to a country where it rained all the time, and pretty soon it began to get on their nerves. They started quarrelling. Nothing bad at first, but hotting up more and more, till at last they were hardly on speaking terms. Every little thing that happened seemed to get the wind up them. There was that business of Smith, for instance." "Who's Smith?" "Mortimer's bull-dog. Old Bennett is scared of him, and wants him kept in the stables, but Mortimer insists on letting him roam about the house. Well, they scrapped a goodish bit about that. And then there was the orchestrion. You remember the orchestrion?" "I haven't been down at Windles since I was a kid."