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It was the dullest spring
on record. And yet there was a quality in that heavy atmosphere which
seemed to threaten mischief. Everybody agreed that it had never been
quite so bad as this. Meanwhile, people yawned. They were bored stiff.
As a source of gossip, those two burglaries were a negligible quantity.
So was the little accident which had just happened to Mr. Keith, who
ruefully declared he had done it on purpose, in order to liven things
up. No one was likely to be taken in by this kind of talk, because the
accident was of an inglorious and even ludicrous kind.
Being very short-sighted he had managed to stumble backwards, somehow
or other, into a large receptacle of lime which was being slaked for
patching up a wall. Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot. Mr.
Keith's trousers were rather badly scalded. He was sensitive on that
point. He suffered a good deal. People came to express their sympathy.
The pain made him more tedious, long-winded and exhortatory than usual.
At that particular moment Denis was being victimized.


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