The “Terrace,” consisting of eight gaunt houses, faced the sea, while
the back rooms commanded a view of the ancient little town some half
mile distant. The beach, a waste of shingle, was desolate and bare
except for a ruined bathing machine and a few pieces of linen drying in
the winter sunshine. In the offing tiny steamers left a trail of smoke,
while sailing-craft, their canvas glistening in the sun, slowly melted
from the sight. On all these things the “Terrace” turned a stolid eye,
and, counting up its gains of the previous season, wondered whether it
could hold on to the next. It was a discontented “Terrace,” and had
become prematurely soured by a Board which refused them a pier, a
band-stand, and illuminated gardens.
From the front windows of the third storey of No. 1 Mrs. Cox, gazing
out to sea, sighed softly.
The season had been a bad one, and Mr. Cox had been even more
troublesome than usual owing to tightness in the money market and the
avowed preference of local publicans for cash transactions to assets in
chalk and slate. In Mr. Cox’s memory there never had been such a
drought, and his crop of patience was nearly exhausted.
He had in his earlier days attempted to do a little work, but his
health had suffered so much that his wife had become alarmed for his
safety. Work invariably brought on a cough, and as he came from a
family whose lungs had formed the staple conversation of their lives,
he had been compelled to abandon it, and at last it came to be
understood that if he would only consent to amuse himself, and not get
into trouble, nothing more would be expected of him. It was not much of
a life for a man of spirit, and at times it became so unbearable that
Mr. Cox would disappear for days together in search of work, returning
unsuccessful after many days with nerves shattered in the pursuit.
Mrs. Cox’s meditations were disturbed by a knock at the front door,
and, the servants having been discharged for the season, she hurried
downstairs to open it, not without a hope of belated lodgers—invalids
in search of an east wind. A stout, middle-aged woman in widow’s weeds
stood on the door-step.
“Glad to see you, my dear,” said the visitor, kissing her loudly.
Mrs. Cox gave her a subdued caress in return, not from any lack of
feeling, but because she did everything in a quiet and spiritless
fashion.
“I’ve got my Uncle Joseph from London staying with us,” continued the
visitor, following her into the hall, “so I just got into the train and
brought him down for a blow at the sea.”
A question on Mrs. Cox’s lips died away as a very small man who had
been hidden by his niece came into sight.
“My Uncle Joseph,” said Mrs. Berry; “Mr. Joseph Piper,” she added.
Mr. Piper shook hands, and after a performance on the door-mat,
protracted by reason of a festoon of hemp, followed his hostess into
the faded drawing-room.
“And Mr. Cox?” inquired Mrs. Berry, in a cold voice.
Mrs. Cox shook her head. “He’s been away this last three days,” she
said, flushing slightly.
“Looking for work?” suggested the visitor.
Mrs. Cox nodded, and, placing the tips of her fingers together,
fidgeted gently.
“Well, I hope he finds it,” said Mrs. Berry, with more venom than the
remark seemed to require. “Why, where’s your marble clock?”
Mrs. Cox coughed. “It’s being mended,” she said, confusedly.
Mrs. Berry eyed her anxiously. “Don’t mind him, my dear,” she said,
with a jerk of her head in the direction of Mr. Piper, “he’s nobody.
Wouldn’t you like to go out on the beach a little while, uncle?”
“No,” said Mr. Piper.
“I suppose Mr. Cox took the clock for company,” remarked Mrs. Berry,
after a hostile stare at her relative.
Mrs. Cox sighed and shook her head. It was no use pretending with Mrs.
Berry.
“He’ll pawn the clock and anything else he can lay his hands on, and
when he’s drunk it up come home to be made a fuss of,” continued Mrs.
Berry, heatedly; “that’s you men.”
Her glance was so fiery that Mr. Joseph Piper was unable to allow the
remark to pass unchallenged.
“_I_ never pawned a clock,” he said, stroking his little grey head.
“That’s a lot to boast of, isn’t it?” demanded his niece; “if I hadn’t
got anything better than that to boast of I wouldn’t boast at all.”
Mr. Piper said that he was not boasting.
“It’ll go on like this, my dear, till you’re ruined,” said the
sympathetic Mrs. Berry, turning to her friend again; “what’ll you do
then?”
“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Cox. “I’ve had a bad season, too, and I’m so
anxious about him in spite of it all. I can’t sleep at nights for
fearing that he’s in some trouble. I’m sure I laid awake half last
night crying.”
Mrs. Berry sniffed loudly, and Mr. Piper making a remark in a low
voice, turned on him with ferocity.
“What did you say?” she demanded.
“I said it does her credit,” said Mr. Piper, firmly.
“I might have known it was nonsense,” retorted his niece, hotly. “Can’t
you get him to take the pledge, Mary?”
“I couldn’t insult him like that,” said Mrs. Cox, with a shiver; “you
don’t know his pride. He never admits that he drinks; he says that he
only takes a little for his indigestion. He’d never forgive me. When he
pawns the things he pretends that somebody has stolen them, and the way
he goes on at me for my carelessness is alarming. He gets worked up to
such a pitch that sometimes I almost think he believes it himself.”
“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Berry, tartly, “you’re too easy with him.”
Mrs. Cox sighed, and, leaving the room, returned with a bottle of wine
which was port to the look and red-currant to the taste, and a seedcake
of formidable appearance. The visitors attacked these refreshments
mildly, Mr. Piper sipping his wine with an obtrusive carefulness which
his niece rightly regarded as a reflection upon her friend’s
hospitality.
“What Cox wants is a shock,” she said; “you’ve dropped some crumbs on
the carpet, uncle.”
Mr. Piper apologised and said he had got his eye on them, and would
pick them up when he had finished and pick up his niece’s at the same
time to prevent her stooping. Mrs. Berry, in an aside to Mrs. Cox, said
that her Uncle Joseph’s tongue had got itself disliked on both sides of
the family.
“And I’d give him one,” said Mrs. Berry, returning again to the subject
of Mr. Cox and shocks. “He has a gentleman’s life of it here, and he
would look rather silly if you were sold up and he had to do something
for his living.”
“It’s putting away the things that is so bad,” said Mrs. Cox, shaking
her head; “that clock won’t last him out, I know; he’ll come back and
take some of the other things. Every spring I have to go through his
pockets for the tickets and get the things out again, and I mustn’t say
a word for fear of hurting his feelings. If I do he goes off again.”
“If I were you,” said Mrs. Berry, emphatically, “I’d get behind with
the rent or something and have the brokers in. He’d look rather
astonished if he came home and saw a broker’s man sitting in a chair—”
“He’d look more astonished if he saw him sitting in a flower-pot,”
suggested the caustic Mr. Piper.
“I couldn’t do that,” said Mrs. Cox. “I couldn’t stand the disgrace,
even though I knew I could pay him out. As it is, Cox is always setting
his family above mine.”
Mrs. Berry, without ceasing to stare Mr. Piper out of countenance,
shook her head, and, folding her arms, again stated her opinion that
Mr. Cox wanted a shock, and expressed a great yearning to be the humble
means of giving him one.
“If you can’t have the brokers in, get somebody to pretend to be one,”
she said, sharply; “that would prevent him pawning any more things, at
any rate. Why wouldn’t he do?” she added, nodding at her uncle.
Anxiety on Mrs. Cox’s face was exaggerated on that of Mr. Piper.
“Let uncle pretend to be a broker’s man in for the rent,” continued the
excitable lady, rapidly. “When Mr. Cox turns up after his spree, tell
him what his doings have brought you to, and say you’ll have to go to
the workhouse.”
“I look like a broker’s man, don’t I?” said Mr. Piper, in a voice more
than tinged with sarcasm.
“Yes,” said his niece, “that’s what put it into my head.”
“It’s very kind of you, dear, and very kind of Mr. Piper,” said Mrs.
Cox, “but I couldn’t think of it, I really couldn’t.”
“Uncle would be delighted,” said Mrs. Berry, with a wilful blinking of
plain facts. “He’s got nothing better to do; it’s a nice house and good
food, and he could sit at the open window and sniff at the sea all day
long.”
Mr. Piper sniffed even as she spoke, but not at the sea.
“And I’ll come for him the day after to-morrow,” said Mrs. Berry.
It was the old story of the stronger will: Mrs. Cox after a feeble
stand gave way altogether, and Mr. Piper’s objections were demolished
before he had given them full utterance. Mrs. Berry went off alone
after dinner, secretly glad to have got rid of Mr. Piper, who was
making a self-invited stay at her house of indefinite duration; and Mr.
Piper, in his new _rôle_ of broker’s man, essayed the part with as much
help as a clay pipe and a pint of beer could afford him.
That day and the following he spent amid the faded grandeurs of the
drawing-room, gazing longingly at the wide expanse of beach and the
tumbling sea beyond. The house was almost uncannily quiet, an occasional
tinkle of metal or crash of china from the basement giving the only
indication of the industrious Mrs. Cox; but on the day after the quiet
of the house was broken by the return of its master, whose annoyance,
when he found the drawing-room clock stolen and a man in possession,
was alarming in its vehemence. He lectured his wife severely on her
mismanagement, and after some hesitation announced his intention of
going through her books. Mrs. Cox gave them to him, and, armed with pen
and ink and four square inches of pink blotting-paper, he performed
feats of balancing which made him a very Blondin of finance.
“I shall have to get something to do,” he said, gloomily, laying down
his pen.
“Yes, dear,” said his wife.
Mr. Cox leaned back in his chair and, wiping his pen on the
blotting-paper, gazed in a speculative fashion round the room. “Have
you any money?” he inquired.
For reply his wife rummaged in her pocket and after a lengthy search
produced a bunch of keys, a thimble, a needle-case, two
pocket-handkerchiefs, and a halfpenny. She put this last on the table,
and Mr. Cox, whose temper had been mounting steadily, threw it to the
other end of the room.
“I can’t help it,” said Mrs. Cox, wiping her eyes. “I’m sure I’ve done
all I could to keep a home together. I can’t even raise money on
anything.”
Mr. Cox, who had been glancing round the room again, looked up sharply.
“Why not?” he inquired.
“The broker’s man,” said Mrs. Cox, nervously; “he’s made an inventory
of everything, and he holds us responsible.”
Mr. Cox leaned back in his chair. “This is a pretty state of things,”
he blurted, wildly. “Here have I been walking my legs off looking for
work, any work so long as it’s honest labour, and I come back to find a
broker’s man sitting in my own house and drinking up my beer.”
He rose and walked up and down the room, and Mrs. Cox, whose nerves
were hardly equal to the occasion, slipped on her bonnet and announced
her intention of trying to obtain a few necessaries on credit. Her
husband waited in indignant silence until he heard the front door close
behind her, and then stole softly upstairs to have a look at the fell
destroyer of his domestic happiness.
Mr. Piper, who was already very tired of his imprisonment, looked up
curiously as he heard the door pushed open, and discovered an elderly
gentleman with an appearance of great stateliness staring at him. In
the ordinary way he was one of the meekest of men, but the insolence of
this stare was outrageous. Mr. Piper, opening his mild blue eyes wide,
stared back. Whereupon Mr. Cox, fumbling in his vest pocket, found a
pair of folders, and putting them astride his nose, gazed at the
pseudo-broker’s man with crushing effect.
“What do you want here?” he asked, at length. “Are you the father of
one of the servants?”
“I’m the father of all the servants in the house,” said Mr. Piper,
sweetly.
“Don’t answer me, sir,” said Mr. Cox, with much pomposity; “you’re an
eyesore to an honest man, a vulture, a harpy.”
Mr. Piper pondered.
“How do you know what’s an eyesore to an honest man?” he asked, at
length.
Mr. Cox smiled scornfully.
“Where is your warrant or order, or whatever you call it?” he demanded.
“I’ve shown it to Mrs. Cox,” said Mr. Piper.
“Show it to me,” said the other.
“I’ve complied with the law by showing it once,” said Mr. Piper,
bluffing, “and I’m not going to show it again.”
Mr. Cox stared at him disdainfully, beginning at his little sleek grey
head and travelling slowly downwards to his untidy boots and then back
again. He repeated this several times, until Mr. Piper, unable to bear
it patiently, began to eye him in the same fashion.
“What are you looking at, vulture?” demanded the incensed Mr. Cox.
“Three spots o’ grease on a dirty weskit,” replied Mr. Piper, readily,
“a pair o’ bow legs in a pair o’ somebody else’s trousers, and a shabby
coat wore under the right arm, with carrying off”—he paused a moment as
though to make sure—“with carrying off of a drawing-room clock.”
He regretted this retort almost before he had finished it, and rose to
his feet with a faint cry of alarm as the heated Mr. Cox first locked
the door and put the key in his pocket and then threw up the window.
“Vulture!” he cried, in a terrible voice.
“Yes, sir,” said the trembling Mr. Piper.
Mr. Cox waved his hand towards the window.
“Fly,” he said, briefly.
Mr. Piper tried to form his white lips into a smile, and his knees
trembled beneath him.
“Did you hear what I said?” demanded Mr. Cox. “What are you waiting
for? If you don’t fly out of the window I’ll throw you out.”
“Don’t touch me,” screamed Mr. Piper, retreating behind a table, “it’s
all a mistake. All a joke. I’m not a broker’s man. Ha! ha!”
“Eh?” said the other; “not a broker’s man? What are you, then?”
In eager, trembling tones Mr. Piper told him, and, gathering confidence
as he proceeded, related the conversation which had led up to his
imposture. Mr. Cox listened in a dazed fashion, and as he concluded
threw himself into a chair, and gave way to a terrible outburst of
grief.
“The way I’ve worked for that woman,” he said, brokenly, “to think it
should come to this! The deceit of the thing; the wickedness of it. My
heart is broken; I shall never be the same man again—never!”
Mr. Piper made a sympathetic noise.
“It’s been very unpleasant for me,” he said, “but my niece is so
masterful.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Mr. Cox, kindly; “shake hands.”
They shook hands solemnly, and Mr. Piper, muttering something about a
draught, closed the window.
“You might have been killed in trying to jump out of that window,” said
Mr. Cox; “fancy the feelings of those two deceitful women then.”
“Fancy _my_ feelings!” said Mr. Piper, with a shudder. “Playing with
fire, that’s what I call it. My niece is coming this afternoon; it
would serve her right if you gave her a fright by telling her you _had_
killed me. Perhaps it would be a lesson to her not to be so officious.”
“It would serve ’em both right,” agreed Mr. Cox; “only Mrs. Berry might
send for the police.”
“I never thought of that,” said Mr. Piper, fondling his chin.
“I might frighten my wife,” mused the amiable Mr. Cox; “it would be a
lesson to her not to be deceitful again. And, by Jove, I’ll get some
money from her to escape with; I know she’s got some, and if she hasn’t
she will have in a day or two. There’s a little pub at Newstead, eight
miles from here, where we could be as happy as fighting cocks with a
fiver or two. And while we’re there enjoying ourselves my wife’ll be
half out of her mind trying to account for your disappearance to Mrs.
Berry.”
“It sounds all right,” said Mr. Piper, cautiously, “but she won’t
believe you. You don’t look wild enough to have killed anybody.”
“I’ll look wild enough when the time comes,” said the other, nodding.
“You get on to the White Horse at Newstead and wait for me. I’ll let
you out at the back way. Come along.”
“But you said it was eight miles,” said Mr. Piper.
“Eight miles easy walking,” rejoined Mr. Cox. “Or there’s a train at
three o’clock. There’s a sign-post at the corner there, and if you
don’t hurry I shall be able to catch you up. Good-bye.”
He patted the hesitating Mr. Piper on the back, and letting him out
through the garden, indicated the road. Then he returned to the
drawing-room, and carefully rumpling his hair, tore his collar from the
stud, overturned a couple of chairs and a small table, and sat down to
wait as patiently as he could for the return of his wife.
He waited about twenty minutes, and then he heard a key turn in the
door below and his wife’s footsteps slowly mounting the stairs. By the
time she reached the drawing-room his tableau was complete, and she
fell back with a faint shriek at the frenzied figure which met her
eyes.
“Hush,” said the tragedian, putting his finger to his lips.
“Henry, what is it?” cried Mrs. Cox. “What _is_ the matter?”
“The broker’s man,” said her husband, in a thrilling whisper. “We had
words—he struck me. In a fit of fury I—I—choked him.”
“_Much?_” inquired the bewildered woman.
“Much?” repeated Mr. Cox, frantically. “I’ve killed him and hidden the
body. Now I must escape and fly the country.”
The bewilderment on Mrs. Cox’s face increased; she was trying to
reconcile her husband’s statement with a vision of a trim little figure
which she had seen ten minutes before with its head tilted backwards
studying the sign-post, and which she was now quite certain was Mr.
Piper.
[Illustration: “With its head tilted back, studying the signpost.”]
“Are you sure he’s dead?” she inquired.
“Dead as a door nail,” replied Mr. Cox, promptly. “I’d no idea he was
such a delicate little man. What am I to do? Every moment adds to my
danger. I must fly. How much money have you got?”
The question explained everything. Mrs. Cox closed her lips with a snap
and shook her head.
“Don’t play the fool,” said her husband, wildly; “my neck’s in danger.”
“I haven’t got anything,” asseverated Mrs. Cox. “It’s no good looking
like that, Henry, I can’t make money.”
Mr. Cox’s reply was interrupted by a loud knock at the hall door, which
he was pleased to associate with the police. It gave him a fine
opportunity for melodrama, in the midst of which his wife, rightly
guessing that Mrs. Berry had returned according to arrangement, went to
the door to admit her. The visitor was only busy two minutes on the
door-mat, but in that time Mrs. Cox was able in low whispers to apprise
her of the state of affairs.
“That’s my uncle all over,” said Mrs. Berry, fiercely; “that’s just the
mean trick I should have expected of him. You leave ’em to me, my
dear.”
She followed her friend into the drawing-room, and having shaken hands
with Mr. Cox, drew her handkerchief from her pocket and applied it to
her eyes.
“She’s told me all about it,” she said, nodding at Mrs. Cox, “and it’s
worse than you think, much worse. It isn’t a broker’s man—it’s my poor
uncle, Joseph Piper.”
“Your _uncle_!” repeated Mr. Cox, reeling back; “the broker’s man your
_uncle_?”
Mrs. Berry sniffed. “It was a little joke on our part,” she admitted,
sinking into a chair and holding her handkerchief to her face. “Poor
uncle; but I dare say he’s happier where he is.”
Mr. Cox wiped his brow, and then, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece,
stared at her in well-simulated amazement.
“See what your joking has led to,” he said, at last. “I have got to be
a wanderer over the face of the earth, all on account of your jokes.”
“It was an accident,” murmured Mrs. Berry, “and nobody knows he was
here, and I’m sure, poor dear, he hadn’t got much to live for.”
“It’s very kind of you to look at it in that way, Susan, I’m sure,”
said Mrs. Cox.
“I was never one to make mischief,” said Mrs. Berry. “It’s no good
crying over spilt milk. If uncle’s killed he’s killed, and there’s an
end of it. But I don’t think it’s quite safe for Mr. Cox to stay here.”
“Just what I say,” said that gentleman, eagerly; “but I’ve got no
money.”
“You get away,” said Mrs. Berry, with a warning glance at her friend,
and nodding to emphasise her words; “leave us some address to write to,
and we must try and scrape twenty or thirty pounds to send you.”
“Thirty?” said Mr. Cox, hardly able to believe his ears.
Mrs. Berry nodded. “You’ll have to make that do to go on with,” she
said, pondering. “‘And as soon as yoa get it you had better get as far
away as possible before poor uncle is discovered. Where are we to send
the money?”
Mr. Cox affected to consider.
“The White Horse, Newstead,” he said at length, in a whisper; “better
write it down.”
Mrs. Berry obeyed; and this business being completed, Mr. Cox, after
trying in vain to obtain a shilling or two cash in hand, bade them a
pathetic farewell and went off down the path, for some reason best
known to himself, on tiptoe.
For the first two days Messrs. Cox and Piper waited with exemplary
patience for the remittance, the demands of the landlord, a man of
coarse fibre, being met in the meantime by the latter gentleman from
his own slender resources. They were both reasonable men, and knew from
experience the difficulty of raising money at short notice; but on the
fourth day, their funds being nearly exhausted, an urgent telegram was
dispatched to Mrs. Cox.
Mr. Cox was alone when the reply came, and Mr. Piper, returning to the
inn-parlour, was amazed and distressed at his friend’s appearance.
Twice he had to address him before he seemed to be aware of his
presence, and then Mr. Cox, breathing hard and staring at him
strangely, handed him the message.
“Eh?” said Mr. Piper, in amaze, as he read slowly:
“‘No—need—send—money—Uncle—Joseph—has—come—back.—BERRY,’ What does it__
mean? Is she mad?”
Mr. Cox shook his head, and taking the paper from him, held it at arm’s
length and regarded it at an angle.
“How can you be there when you’re supposed to be dead?” he said, at
length.
“How can I be there when I’m here?” rejoined Mr. Piper, no less
reasonably.
Both gentlemen lapsed into a wondering silence, devoted to the
attempted solution of their own riddles. Finally Mr. Cox, seized with a
bright idea that the telegram had got altered in transmission, went off
to the post-office and dispatched another, which went straight to the
heart of things:
“_Don’t—understand—is—Uncle—Joseph—alive?_”
A reply was brought to the inn-parlour an hour later on. Mr. Cox opened
it, gave one glance at it, and then with a suffocating cry handed it to
the other. Mr. Piper took it gingerly, and his eyebrows almost
disappeared as he read:
“_Yes—smoking—in—drawing-room._”
His first strong impression was that it was a case for the Psychical
Research Society, but this romantic view faded in favour of a simple
solution, propounded by Mr. Cox with much crispness, that Mrs. Berry
was leaving the realms of fact for those of romance. His actual words
were shorter, but the meaning is the same.
“I’ll go home and ask to see you,” he said, fiercely; “that’ll bring
things to a head, I should think.”
“And she’ll say I’ve gone back to London, perhaps,” said Mr. Piper,
gifted with sudden clearness of vision. “You can’t show her up unless
you take me with you, and that’ll show _us_ up. That’s her artfulness;
that’s Susan all over.”
“She’s a wicked, untruthful woman,” gasped Mr. Cox.
“I never did like Susan,” said Mr. Piper, with acerbity, “never.”
Mr. Cox said he could easily understand it, and then, as a forlorn
hope, sat down and wrote a long letter to his wife, in which, after
dwelling at great length on the lamentable circumstances surrounding
the sudden demise of Mr. Piper, he bade her thank Mrs. Berry for her
well-meant efforts to ease his mind, and asked for the immediate
dispatch of the money promised.
A reply came the following evening from Mrs. Berry herself. It was a
long letter, and not only long, but badly written and crossed. It began
with the weather, asked after Mr. Cox’s health, and referred to the
writer’s; described with much minuteness a strange headache which had
attacked Mrs. Cox, together with a long list of the remedies prescribed
and the effects of each, and wound up in an out-of-the-way corner, in a
vein of cheery optimism which reduced both readers to the verge of
madness.
“Dear Uncle Joseph has quite recovered, and, in spite of a little
nervousness—he was always rather timid—at meeting you again, has
consented to go to the White Horse to satisfy you that he is alive. I
dare say he will be with you as soon as this letter—perhaps help you to
read it.”
Mr. Cox laid the letter down with extreme care, and, coughing gently,
glanced in a sheepish fashion at the goggle-eyed Mr. Piper.
For some time neither of them spoke. Mr. Cox was the first to break the
silence and—when he had finished—Mr. Piper said “Hush.”
“Besides, it does no good,” he added.
“It does _me_ good,” said Mr. Cox, recommencing.
Mr. Piper held up his hand with a startled gesture for silence. The
words died away on his friend’s lips as a familiar voice was heard in
the passage, and the next moment Mrs. Berry entered the room and stood
regarding them.
“I ran down by the same train to make sure you came, uncle,” she
remarked. “How long have you been here?”
Mr. Piper moistened his lips and gazed wildly at Mr. Cox for guidance.
“’Bout—’bout five minutes,” he stammered.
“We were so glad dear uncle wasn’t hurt much,” continued Mrs. Berry,
smiling, and shaking her head at Mr. Cox; “but the idea of your burying
him in the geranium-bed; we haven’t got him clean yet.”
Mr. Piper, giving utterance to uncouth noises, quitted the room
hastily, but Mr. Cox sat still and stared at her dumbly.
“Weren’t you surprised to see him?” inquired his tormentor.
“Not after your letter,” said Mr. Cox, finding his voice at last, and
speaking with an attempt at chilly dignity. “Nothing could surprise me
much after that.”
Mrs. Berry smiled again.
“Ah, I’ve got another little surprise for you,” she said, briskly.
“Mrs. Cox was so upset at the idea of being alone while you were a
wanderer over the face of the earth, that she and I have gone into
partnership. We have had a proper deed drawn up, so that now there are
two of us to look after things. Eh? What did you say?”
“I was just thinking,” said Mr. Cox.