‘That,’ said Peter, who had sometimes an uncanny way of echoing one’s own thoughts, ‘is a very dainty, ladylike occupation.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Harriet. She stood on one leg to inspect the pound or two of garden mould adhering to her stout brogue shoe. ‘A garden is a lovesome thing. God wot.’
‘Her feet beneath her pettitcoat like little mice stole in and out,’ agreed his lordship gravely. ‘Can you tell me, rosy-fingered Aurora, whether the unfortunate person in the room below me is being slowly murdered or only having a fit?’
‘I was beginning to wonder myself,’ said Harriet; for strange, strangled cries were proceeding from the sittingroom. ‘Perhaps I had better go and find out.’
‘Must you go? You improve the scenery so much. I like a landscape with figures… Dear me! what a shocking sound-like Nell Cook under the paving-stone! It seemed to come right up into the room beside me. I am becoming a nervous wreck.’
‘You don’t look it. You look abominably placid and pleased with life.’
‘Well, so I am. But one should not be selfish in one’s happiness. I feel convinced that somewhere about the house there is a fellow-creature in trouble.’
At this point Bunter emerged from the front door, walking backwards across the strip of turf, with eyes cast upward as though seeking a heavenly revelation, and solemnly shook his head, like Lord Burleigh in The Critic.
‘Ain’t we there yet?’ cried the voice of Mrs Ruddle from the window.
‘No,’ said Bunter, returning, ‘we appear to be making no progress at all.’
‘It seems,’ said Peter, ‘that we are expecting a happy event. Parturiunt montes. At any rate, the creation seems to be groaning and travailing together a good deal.’
Harriet got off the flower-bed and scraped the earth her shoes with a garden label. ‘I shall cease to decorate the landscape and go and part of a domestic interior.’
Peter uncoiled himself from the window-sill, took off his dressing-gown and pulled away his blazer from under ginger cat.
‘All that’s the matter with this chimney, Mr Bunter,’ announced Mr Puffett, ‘is, sut.’ Having thus, as it were, come out by the same road as he had gone in, he began to draw his brush from the chimney, unscrewing it with extreme deliberation, rod by rod.
‘So,’ said Mr Bunter, with an inflection of sarcasm lost on Mr Puffett, ‘so we had inferred.’
‘That’s it,’ pursued Mr Puffett, ‘corroded sut. No chimney can’t draw when the pot’s full of corroded sut like this chimney-pot is. You can’t ask it. It ain’t reasonable.’
‘I don’t ask it,’ retorted Mr Bunter. ‘I ask you to get it clear, that’s all.’
‘Well now, Mr Bunter,’ said Mr Puffett, with an air of injury, ‘I put it to you to just take a look at this ’ere sut.’ He extended a grimy hand filled with what looked like clinkers. ‘’Ard as a crock, that sut is, corroded ’ard. That’s wot your chimney-pot’s full of, and you can’t get a brush through it, not with all the power you puts be’ind it. Near forty feet of rod I’ve got up that chimney, Mr Bunter, trying to get through the pot, and it ain’t fair on a man nor his rods.’ He pulled down another section of his apparatus and straightened it out with loving care.
‘Some means will have to be devised to penetrate the obstruction,’ said Mr Bunter, his eyes on the window, ‘and without delay. Her ladyship is coming in from the garden. You can take out the breakfast tray, Mrs Ruddle.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Ruddle, peeping under the dish-covers before lifting the tray from the radio cabinet where Bunter had set it down, ‘they’re taking their vittles well-that’s a good sign in a young couple. I remember when me and Ruddle was wed-’
‘And the lamps all need new wicks,’ added Bunter austerely, ‘and the burners cleaned before you fill them.’
‘Mr Noakes ain’t used no lamps this long time,’ said Mrs Ruddle, with a sniff. ‘Says ’e can see well enough by candlelight. Comes cheaper, I suppose.’ She flounced out with the tray and, encountering Harriet in the doorway, dropped a curtsy that sent the dish-covers sliding.
‘Oh, you’ve got the sweep, Bunter-that’s splendid! We thought we heard something going on.’
‘Yes, my lady. Mr Puffett has been good enough to oblige. But I understand that he has encountered some impenetrable obstacle in the upper portion of the chimney.’
‘How kind of you to come. Mr Puffett. We had a dreadful time last night.’
Judging from the sweep’s eye that propitiation was advisable, Harriet extended her hand. Mr Puffett looked at it, looked at his own, pulled up his sweaters to get at his trousers pocket, extracted a newly laundered red-cotton handkerchief, shook it slowly from its folds, draped it across his palm and so grasped Harriet’s fingers, rather in the manner of a royal proxy bedding his master’s bride with the sheet between them. ‘Well, me lady.’ said Mr Puffett, ‘I’m allus willin’ to oblige. Not but what you’ll allow as a chimney wot’s choked like this chimney is ain’t fair to a man nor yet to ’is rods. But I will make bold to say that if any man can get the corroded sut out of this ’ere chimney-pot, I’m the man to do it. It’s experience, you see, that’s wot it is, and the power I puts be’ind it.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Harriet
‘As I understand the matter, my lady,’ put in Bunter, ‘it is the actual pot that’s choked-no structural defect in the stack.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mr Puffett, mollified by finding him self appreciated, ‘the pot’s where your trouble is.’ He stripped off another sweater to reveal himself in emerald green. ‘I’m a-goin’ to try it with the rods alone, without the brush. Maybe, with my power be’ind it, we’ll be able to get the rod through the sut. If not, then we’ll ’ave to get the ladders.’
‘Ladders?’
‘Access by the roof, my lady,’ explained Bunter.
‘What fun!’ said Harriet. ‘I’m sure Mr Puffett will manage it somehow. Can you find me a vase or something for these flowers, Bunter?’
‘Very good, my lady.’ (Nothing, thought Mr Bunter, not even an Oxford education, would prevent a woman’s mind from straying away after inessentials; but he was pleased to note that the temper was, so far, admirably controlled. A vase of water was a small price to pay for harmony.)
‘Peter!’ cried Harriet up the staircase. (Bunter, had he remained to witness it, might after all have conceded her an instinct for essentials.) ‘Peter darling! the sweep’s here!’
‘Oh, frabjous day! I am coming, my own, my sweep.’ He pattered down briskly. ‘What a genius you have for saying the right thing! All my life I have waited to hear those exquisite words, Peter darling, the sweep’s come. We are married by god! we are married. I thought so once, but now I know it.’
‘Some people take a lot of convincing.’
‘One is afraid to believe in good fortune. The sweep! I crushed down my rising hopes. I said. No-it is a thunderstorm, a small earthquake, or at most a destitute cow dying by inches in the chimney. I dared not court disappointment. It is so long since I was taken into anybody’s confidence about a sweep. As a rule, Bunter smuggles him in when I am out of the house, for fear my lordship should be inconvenienced. Only a wife would treat me with the disrespect I deserve and summon me to look upon the-good lord!’
He turned, as he spoke, to look upon Mr Puffett, only the soles of whose boots were visible. At this moment a bellow so loud and prolonged issued from the fireplace that Peter turned quite pale. ‘He hasn’t got stuck, has he?’