"He seems to have done very well in the time," I said. "That's the pretty one, isn't it?"
I here became aware that the hall was filling with people, and that Mr. Armstrong, the auctioneer, with his attendant swarm of buyers, was at my elbow.
"That's a sweet instrument," he said dispassionately, "and, I may say, magnificently played. Come, ladies and gentlemen, we'll not interrupt the concert. It might be as good for me to take the yard next, before the rain comes."
He led away his swarm, like a queen bee; "Semiramide" stormed on; some people strayed into the room and began to examine the furniture. The afternoon had grown overcast and threatening, and I noticed that a tall man in dark clothes and a yachting cap had stationed himself near the treble's right hand. He was standing between her and the light, rather rudely, it seemed to me, but the players did not appear to notice.
"That was rather a free and easy fellow," I said to Philippa, as we were borne along to the back door by the tide of auction.
"Who? Do you mean Mr. Armstrong?" said Philippa. "I'm rather fond of him----"
"I didn't notice him--" began Philippa, but at this moment we were shot into the yard by pressure from behind. Mr. Armstrong took his stand on a packing-case, the people hived in round him, and I saw my wife no more.
Coils of fencing wire and sheets of corrugated iron were proffered, and left the audience cold; a faint interest was roused when the auctioneer's clerk held up one of a party of zinc pails for inspection.
"You'd count the stars through that one!" said a woman beside me.
"You can buy it for a telescope, ma'am!" said Mr. Armstrong swiftly.
"Well, well, hasn't he a very fine delivery!" said my neighbour, regarding Mr. Armstrong as if he were a landscape.
"Hannah," said the woman on my other hand, in a deep and reproachful contralto, speaking as if I did not exist, "did ye let the kitchen chairs go from you?"
"There wasn't one o' them but had a leg astray," apologised Hannah--"they got great hardship. When Harrington 'd have a drop taken he'd throw them here and there."
"Ladies! Ladies!" reproved Mr. Armstrong. "Is this an oxtion or is it a conversassiony? John! show that ladder."
"A big lot of use a forty-foot ladder'd be to the people round this place!" said a superior young farmer in a new suit of clothes; "there isn't a house here, unless it's my father's, would have any occasion for it."