Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/278

Rh Bunting, still standing outside the gate, suddenly knew what it was his lodger had been doing on the other side of the low wall. Mr. Sleuth had evidently been out to buy himself another pair of new boots, and then he had gone inside the gate and had put them on, placing his old footgear in the paper in which the new pair had been wrapped.

The ex-butler waited—waited quite a long time, not only until Mr. Sleuth had let himself into the house, but till the lodger had had time to get well away, upstairs.

Then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latchkey in the door. He lingered as long over the job of hanging his hat and coat up in the hall as he dared, in fact till his wife called out to him. Then he went in, and throwing the paper down on the table, he said sullenly: "There it is! You can see it all for yourself—not that there’s very much to see," and groped his way to the fire.

His wife looked at him in sharp alarm. "Whatever have you done to yourself?" she exclaimed. "You’re ill—that’s what it is, Bunting. You got a chill last night!"

"I told you I’d got a chill," he muttered. "’Twasn’t last night, though; ’twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus. Margaret keeps that housekeeper’s room o’ hers like a hothouse—that’s what she does. ’Twas going out from there into the biting wind, that’s what did for me. It must be awful to stand about in such weather; ’tis a wonder to me how that young fellow, Joe Chandler, can stand the life—being out in all weathers like he is."

Bunting spoke at random, his one anxiety being to