She went on, still talking through the black window-pane: 

’Your pore dear auntie was very kind about it.  She said she’d make all allowances for one, but no more.  Never any more....  Then, you didn’t know ‘oo Charlie was all this time?’

‘Your nephew, I always thought.’

‘Well, well,’ she spoke pityingly.  ’Everybody’s business being nobody’s business, I suppose no one thought to tell you.  But Charlie made ’is own way for ’imself from the beginnin’!...  But her upstairs, she never produced anything.  Just an ’ousekeeper, as you might say.  ’Turned over an’ went to sleep straight off.  She ’ad the impudence to ask me for ’ot sherry-gruel.’

‘Did you give it to her,’ said Midmore.

‘Me?  Your sherry?  No!’

The memory of Sidney’s outrageous rhyme at the window, and Charlie’s long nose (he thought it looked interested at the time) as he passed the copies of Mrs. Werf’s last four wills, overcame Midmore without warning.

‘This damp is givin’ you a cold,’ said Rhoda, rising.  ’There you go again!  Sneezin’s a sure sign of it.  Better go to bed.  You can’t do any thin’ excep’’—­she stood rigid, with crossed arms—­’about me.’

‘Well.  What about you?’ Midmore stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket.

‘Now you know about it, what are you goin’ to do—­sir?’

She had the answer on her lean cheek before the sentence was finished.

‘Go and see if you can get us something to eat, Rhoda.  And beer.’

‘I expec’ the larder’ll be in a swim,’ she replied, ’but old bottled stuff don’t take any harm from wet.’  She returned with a tray, all in order, and they ate and drank together, and took observations of the falling flood till dawn opened its bleared eyes on the wreck of what had been a fair garden.  Midmore, cold and annoyed, found himself humming: 

     ’That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass,
     That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.

There isn’t a rose left, Rhoda!

     An awesome ebb and flow it was
     To many more than mine and me. 
     But each will mourn his ...

It’ll cost me a hundred.’

‘Now we know the worst,’ said Rhoda, ’we can go to bed.  I’ll lay on the kitchen sofa.  His light’s burnin’ still.’

‘And she?’

’Dirty old cat!  You ought to ’ear ‘er snore!’

At ten o’clock in the morning, after a maddening hour in his own garden on the edge of the retreating brook, Midmore went off to confront more damage at Sidney’s.  The first thing that met him was the pig, snowy white, for the water had washed him out of his new sty, calling on high heaven for breakfast.  The front door had been forced open, and the flood had registered its own height in a brown dado on the walls.  Midmore chased the pig out and called up the stairs.

‘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.’