"_Worse?_" The bellows inflated sharply. "Worse is just it--it's the shock of finding out things I never even suspected!" She whirled upon the butler.
Wilkes shivered as under a sudden cold what's-its-name. He looked at her protestingly, his eye cutting a suggestive hint of my presence.
"Oh, go on!"--the judge nodded to him with some impatience. "It's all right--Mr. Lightnut is like one of us. Out with it, whatever it is!"
"Yes, sir." Wilkes coughed acquiescence, but shot a glance, half-reproachful, half-apprehensive, at the housekeeper.
"_Are_ you going to tell him or not--and you a man?--or will you put it on me?" And she began to inflate again.
"The fact is, sir, Mr. Jack--h'm!"--he fidgeted through an instant's misery, then let it come: "It's about him and one of the maids, sir!"
In the jaw-twisting roar, the judge all but lost his plate--his hand came up just in time to save it. As for Wilkes, his portly figure seemed to lift, balloon-like, from the floor for an instant, then settled back.
"Yes, sir." And Wilkes quailed before the judge's brows.
The judge scowled at her. "Are you both crazy?" he demanded. "What is all this--what is it you have to tell? Say it all in a word--one or the other of you--and have done!" His jaw settled with a snap.
The housekeeper assumed an injured air. "Well, sir," she said with a toss, "it just means this: either I or Flora go at the end of this week--I give notice now!"
"All right," said the judge with a sort of bland ugliness, "then that's settled--_you_ go! That is, unless you can get right down to brass tacks this instant and say what you've got to say."
And, black as thunder, the old boy laid his hand upon the knob. By Jove, it did me good to see her crinkle up!
"I'm sure I beg your pardon, Judge," she said, her voice modifying to a snuffling twang, "but this has so upset my nerves--Mr. Jack, of all men!" She fumbled for her handkerchief before she found it--Pugsley says they _always_ do! "Such talk, sir! I _never_--" With a kind of gurgle, she suddenly flopped into the nearest chair and lay there, wriggling like a jolly auto freshly cranked, and snorting like its horn.
The judge, with head down, glared at her through his glasses.
"Talk? _That's_ nothing!"--he uttered a snort. "Why, hang it, madam, he's _drunk_! Can't you have a little Christian charity and put yourself in his place? The poor boy doesn't know what he's saying!"