Whereupon, much relieved, Mr. Wycherly bade his wards good-night, and departed downstairs again where he sat for some considerable time pondering Montagu's view of the first fratricide. "It seems to me," he said to himself, "that it is I who will be the one to receive enlightenment."
It was three days since they had, as Mr. Wycherly put it, "come into residence," and during that time Mrs. Griffin's cooking had not improved. Neither had the house become less dusty or more tidy. The time was afternoon, about five o'clock, and they sat at tea; a singularly unappetising tea.
Smeary silver, cups and plates all bearing the impress of Mrs. Griffin's thumb, two plates of thick bread-and-butter and a tin of bloater-paste were placed upon a dirty tablecloth. Neither Mr. Wycherly nor the boys liked bloater-paste, but Mrs. Griffin did. Hence it graced the feast.
Edmund was tired of bad meals. The novelty, what he at first called the "Swissishness," was wearing off, and as he took his place at table that afternoon there flashed into his mind a vivid picture of the tea-table at Remote. Aunt Esperance sitting kind and smiling behind the brilliant silver teapot that reflected such funny-looking little boys; the white, white napery—Aunt Esperance was so particular about tablecloths—laden with scones, such good scones, both plain and currant! Shortbread in a silver cake-basket; and jam, crystal dishes full of jam, two kinds, topaz-coloured and ruby.
Somehow the sight of that horrid tin of bloater-paste evoked a poignantly beatific vision of the jam. It was the jam broke Edmund down.
He gave a dry sob, laid his arms on the table and his head on his arms, wailing: "Oh, dear! oh, dear! I wish Aunt Esperance hadn't gone and died."
Mr. Wycherly started up, looking painfully distressed. Montagu ran round to his little brother and put his arm round his shoulder—at the same time he murmured to his guardian: "It's the butter, it really is very bad."
"It's all bad," lamented Edmund; "we shall starve, all of us, if it goes on. One morning that bed-making body will come in and she'll find three skeletons. I know she will."
Mr. Wycherly sat down again. "Edmund, my dear little boy," he said brokenly, "I am so sorry, I ought not to have brought you here yet...."
"Look, look at poor Guardie," whispered Montagu.
Edmund raised his head.
"Would you like me to telegraph to Lady Alicia and ask her to have you for the rest of the holidays? I know she would, and by-and-bye, surely, by-and-bye we shall find some one less incompetent than that—than Mrs. Griffin."
Edmund shook himself free of his brother's arm and literally flung himself upon his guardian, exclaiming vehemently: "No, no, I want to stay with you. It's just as bad for you."
It was worse, for Mr. Wycherly could not restore exhausted nature with liberal supplies of Banbury cakes and buns. For the last three days he had eaten hardly anything and was, moreover, seriously concerned that the boys were assuredly not getting proper food. He would have gone back with them to the King's Arms immediately he discovered how extremely limited were Mrs. Griffin's powers had it not been that just then he received the furniture removers' bill, and, as Lady Alicia had warned him, it was very heavy.
He had come in to tea with a sore heart that afternoon, for Mrs. Griffin had half an hour before informed him that she could not come on the morrow; so that now even her poor help would be lost to them. She was going, she said, to her "sister-in-law" at Abingdon for Sunday, as she needed a rest.
"So much cookin' and cleanin' is what I ain't used to; no, not if it was ever so; and I can't keep on with it for long at a stretch. I'll come on Monday just to oblige you if so be as I'm up to it."
"I wish you had told me this sooner," Mr. Wycherly remonstrated, "then perhaps I might have been able to obtain help for to-morrow elsewhere."
But what they were to do on the morrow was no concern of Mrs. Griffin's. It was an easy and lucrative place and she wanted no interlopers. But she also wanted her outing to Abingdon, and she was going.
Mr. Wycherly poured out the black tea and Edmund attacked a piece of bread-and-butter.
The red rep curtains from the dining-room at Remote were hung in the dining-room at Oxford, but they in no way shrouded its inmates from the public gaze except when they were drawn at night. The house stood right on the pavement; even a small child could see in, and a good many availed themselves of the privilege.
Over this room was the boys' bedroom. Here there were no "fixtures" on which to suspend curtains, nor did it strike either of the three most concerned that blinds or curtains were an immediate necessity. They had all lived in a house that stood so far from other houses (as its name signified) that such a contingency as prying neighbours never occurred to them and it never entered their heads to concern themselves with those on the other side of the road.
Presently Mrs. Griffin brought in a note held gingerly between her finger and thumb, remarking that it was from the "lady as lives hopposite."
Mr. Wycherly opened it hastily, found he had mislaid his glasses, and handed it to Montagu to read.
Edmund immediately rushed round to assist Montagu, thinking it was probably an invitation, and Edmund liked invitations.
Montagu read it slowly and impressively as follows:—
"DEAR SIR,
"I think it only right to inform you that I can see the young gentlemen performing their ablutions and dressing and undressing both when the light is on and in the morning. Such publicity is most distressing, and I venture to suggest that blinds or curtains should be affixed in their room without delay.
"Yours faithfully,
"SELINA BROOKS."
Mr. Wycherly sank back in his chair with a groan. "I quite forgot curtains and blinds," he exclaimed in bitter self-reproach. "There are none in my room either; do you suppose the people in the next house can see me?"
"Sure to!" cried Edmund gleefully; "they'll be writing next that they can see an old gentleman 'paforming his ablutions'; but I can't see how they do for we all wash in the bath-room, and that's at the back. I suppose they see us washing our teeth and you shaving. I wonder if that's more depressing or they don't mind so much?"
"But what can we do?" Mr. Wycherly exclaimed despairingly. "It is already Saturday evening and we ought to have blinds or something now, to-night. How do they fix blinds, by the way?"
Montagu went and stood at the window and gloomily surveyed the houses opposite.
"You can't see a thing in her house," he said sadly. "There's white curtains with frills downstairs and a straight thing right across the windows upstairs, and a looking-glass in one window shows just above the straight thing. You've got that, you know, for shaving; we might put ours there too; it would fill up a bit. It's against the wall just now because we liked to see out."
"Oh! they'd just peek round it," said Edmund. "We'd best nail a sheet across for to-night."
"But won't that look funny from outside?" Montagu objected.
"Not half so funny as us skipping about with nothing on," Edmund retorted.
Mr. Wycherly sat, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands: "Boys, boys, it is appalling that at the very outset we should have scandalised a neighbour and made ourselves a nuisance."
"Not a nuisance, Guardie," Edmund remonstrated; "she must have liked to watch us or she wouldn't have done it. If Mrs. Thingummy had kept behind her own curtains she couldn't have seen us so plain."
Here Mrs. Griffin tapped at the door again, opened it about three inches, and called through: "A lady to see you, sir."
"That'll be your one come to complain," Edmund whispered to his distracted guardian.
"Am I interrupting you? May I come in?" asked