'No parley-vous here, please!' said old Trampleasure. 'No one any more mutton? Well, a merciful man is merciful to his beast, says Holy Writ, and so say I. Bella, take out the meat for your own supper.' When the red-haired servant, who walked from her shoulders, had cleared the table, and had put another log on the fire, and impregnated the atmosphere of the room with a scent of yellow soap, Tramplara said: 'Now for some music. Do you tum-tum, missie?'
'Beg pardon, Countess Garcia de Candelstickio. If you don't play yourself, perhaps you will enjoy good music when you hear it? Now then, Orange, sit you down. Sampson, get out your flute, and here is my bass viol, big and burly, and sound in the wind as jolly old Trampleasure himself.'
'Do you play at all, Countess?' asked Herring.
'Occasionally; according to where I am. I am not Orphée. I do not pretend to tame the beasts.'
'Come along, Captain, you must not absent yourself from the concerto. Can you manage any other music than blowing your own trumpet?'
'If Miss Orange will supply me with a comb and some silver paper, I can give you a rude imitation of the pan-pipes.'
Orange became grave at once. 'Do not jest on that subject, Captain Trecarrel.'
'No, no,' threw in Trampleasure, 'it is all cursed superstition, but still, "Let sleeping dogs lay," as Chalker observes in the "Canterbury Tales."
'You have heard of the old gentleman in red who is said to walk here,' answered Orange, in a subdued tone. 'The tenants who had Dolbeare before us let the walking-sticks lie at the agent's, and they were fairly routed out of the house by the noises.'
'It was rats,' said Trampleasure; 'women are cowards about noises.'
'What has this to do with my impromptu musical instrument?' asked Captain Trecarrel.
'This,' answered Orange; 'whenever there is any great misfortune about to befall those in the house, a sound is heard going through it such as that you proposed to make. What is singular is that one of the walking-sticks that goes with the house has some such a musical instrument in the handle.'
'Who is supposed to walk and pipe woe to the house?' asked the Captain.
'That red man hanging on the wall behind you.'
'He appears harmless enough,' said Trecarrel.