’I applaud your determination. It can hardly be wholesome to have the air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage.’
’Your lordship is right there, I think. But I had not my window open last night. It was rather the noise that went on— no doubt from the twigs sweeping the glass—that kept me open-eyed.’
’I think that can hardly be, Sir Richard. Here— you see it from this point. None of these nearest branches even can touch your casement unless there were a gale, and there was none of that last night. They miss the panes by a foot.’
’No, sir, true. What, then, will it be, I wonder, that scratched and rustled so— ay, and covered the dust on my sill with lines and marks?’
At last they agreed that the rats must have come up through the ivy. That was the Bishop’s idea, and
