and has those awful manners—well, we’re safe, nobody else would have her.”
I perceived that my wife’s methods of housekeeping were not so entirely haphazard as I had imagined. A certain amount of reasoning underlay them. Whether it was worth while having a maid at the price of her not being able to cook, and having a habit of throwing dishes and remarks at one with the same disconcerting abruptness, was a debatable matter.
“And anyway,” continued Griselda, “you must make allowances for her manners being worse than usual just now. You can’t expect her to feel exactly sympathetic about Colonel Protheroe’s death when he jailed her young man.”
“Did he jail her young man?”
“Yes, for poaching. You know, that man, Archer. Mary has been walking out with him for two years.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Darling Len, you never know anything.”
“It’s queer,” I said, “that everyone says the shot came from the woods.”
“I don’t think it’s queer at all,” said Griselda. “You see, one so often hears shots in the wood. So naturally, when you do hear a shot, you just assume as a matter of course that it is in the wood. It probably just sounds a bit louder than usual. Of course, if one were in the next room, you’d realise that it was in the house, but from Mary’s kitchen with the window right the other side of the house, I don’t believe you’d ever think of such a thing.”
The door opened again.