“‘You are old, Father William,’ his young niece said. ‘And your hair has become very white. ‘And yet you incessantly stand on your head. ‘Do you think, at your age, it is right?’”
In preparation for the detective’s visit she has laid out my best silk pajamas, and her reason for doing so sounds like her:
“No man is really at his best without his trousers,” she observed. “But there’s a sort of moral support about silk pajamas. It puts you out of the house-breaking class, anyhow.”
“Not at all,” I retorted. “Only our best house-breakers can afford them, these days.”
But it shows her strength and my weakness, that I am now wearing them.…
Greenough has come and gone. What he thinks of things now I cannot say, but at least I am, as I have had occasion more than once to record here, still at
