'I be abed o' course. Which step 'as she rose to?' Sidney cried from above. 'The fourth? Then it's beat all records. Come up.'
'Are you ill?' Midmore asked as he entered the room. The red eyelids blinked cheerfully. Mr. Sidney, beneath a sumptuous patch-work quilt, was smoking.
'Nah! I'm only thankin' God I ain't my own landlord. Take that cheer. What's she done?'
'It hasn't gone down enough for me to make sure.'
'Them floodgates o' yourn'll be middlin' far down the brook by now; an' your rose-garden have gone after 'em. I saved my chickens, though. You'd better get Mus' Sperrit to take the law o' Lotten an' 'is fish-pond.'
'No, thanks. I've trouble enough without that.'
'Hev ye?' Mr. Sidney grinned. 'How did ye make out with those two women o' mine last night? I lay they fought.'
'You infernal old scoundrel!' Midmore laughed.
'I be--an' then again I bain't,' was the placid answer. 'But, Rhoda, _she_ wouldn't ha' left me last night. Fire or flood, she wouldn't.'
'Why didn't you ever marry her?' Midmore asked.
'Waste of good money. She was willin' without.'
There was a step on the gritty mud below, and a voice humming. Midmore rose quickly saying: 'Well, I suppose you're all right now.'
'I be. I ain't a landlord, nor I ain't young--nor anxious. Oh, Mus' Midmore! Would it make any odds about her thirty pounds comin' regular if I married her? Charlie said maybe 'twould.'
'Did he?' Midmore turned at the door. 'And what did Jimmy say about it?'
'Jimmy?' Mr. Sidney chuckled as the joke took him. 'Oh, _he's_ none o' mine. He's Charlie's look-out.'
Midmore slammed the door and ran downstairs.
'Well, this is a--sweet--mess,' said Miss Sperrit in shortest skirts and heaviest riding-boots. 'I had to come down and have a look at it. "The old mayor climbed the belfry tower." 'Been up all night nursing your family?'
'Nearly that! Isn't it cheerful?' He pointed through the door to the stairs with small twig-drift on the last three treads.
'It's a record, though,' said she, and hummed to herself:
'That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass, That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.'
'You're always singing that, aren't you?' Midmore said suddenly as she passed into the parlour where slimy chairs had been stranded at all angles.