He paused, and looked at Sam as though desiring comment. Sam had none to offer.
"Why do you say you're in a hole?" he asked. "It seems to me as though you had done yourself a bit of good. You've got the check, and you're in the same house with Miss Hubbard. What more do you want?"
"But suppose mother gets to hear about it?"
"Well?"
"She'd be sorer than a sunburned neck."
"Probably. But why should she hear of it?"
"Ah! I'm coming to that."
"Is there some more of the story?"
"Quite a lot."
"Charge on," said Sam resignedly.
Eustace Hignett fixed a despondent gaze on the shingle, up which the gray waves were crawling with their usual sluggish air of wishing themselves elsewhere. A rain-drop fell down the back of his neck, but he did not notice it.
"It was the weather that really started it," he said.
"Started what?"
"The trouble. What sort of weather have you been having here?"
"I haven't noticed."
"Well, down at Windles it has been raining practically all the time, and after about a couple of days it became fairly clear to me that Bennett and Mortimer were getting a bit fed. I mean to say, having spent all their lives in America, don't you know, they weren't used to a country where it rained all the time, and pretty soon it began to get on their nerves. They started quarrelling. Nothing bad at first, but hotting up more and more, till at last they were hardly on speaking terms. Every little thing that happened seemed to get the wind up them. There was that business of Smith, for instance."
"Who's Smith?"
"Mortimer's bull-dog. Old Bennett is scared of him, and wants him kept in the stables, but Mortimer insists on letting him roam about the house. Well, they scrapped a goodish bit about that. And then there was the orchestrion. You remember the orchestrion?"
"I haven't been down at Windles since I was a kid."
"That's right. I forgot that. Well, my pater had an orchestrion put in the drawing-room. One of these automatic things you switch on, you know. Makes a devil of a row. Bennett can't stand it, and Mortimer insists on playing it all day. Well, they hotted up a goodish bit over that."
"Well, I don't see how all this affects you. If they want to scrap, why not let them?"