"Answer yer the same thing now, if yer called up to 'im agen, I
'spect," was the opinion of the staff. "Was on 'is 'ands and knees
when I looked in, scooping round under the bed for 'is collar stud."

Mrs. Korner paused with the teapot in her hand. "Was he talking?"

"Talkin'? Nobody there to talk to; I ëadn't got no time to stop and
chatter."

"I mean to himself," explained Mrs. Korner. "He--he wasn't swearing?"
There was a note of eagerness, almost of hope, in Mrs. Korner's voice.

"Swearin'! 'E! Why, 'e don't know any."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Korner. "That will do, Harriet; you may go."

Mrs Korner put down the teapot with a bang. "The very girl," said
Mrs. Korner bitterly, "the very girl despises him."

"Perhaps," suggested Miss Greene, "he had been swearing and had
finished."

But Mrs. Korner was not to be comforted. "Finished! Any other man
would have been swearing all the time."

"Perhaps," suggested the kindly bosom friend, ever the one to plead
the cause of the transgressor, "perhaps he was swearing, and she did
not hear him. You see, if he had his head well underneath the bed--"