I tell Lamchick he ought to have it opened up, but his
wife doesn't want it touched. She seems to think it just right as it
is. I have always had a fancy for a secret passage. I decided I
would have the drawbridge repaired and made practicable. Flanked on
each side with flowers in tubs, it would have been a novel and
picturesque approach."
"Was there a drawbridge?" asked Dick.
"There was no drawbridge," I explained. "The entrance to the house
was through what the caretaker called the conservatory. It was not
the sort of house that goes with a drawbridge."
"Then what about the Norman arches?" argued Dick.
"Not arches," I corrected him; "Arch. The Norman arch was downstairs
in the kitchen. It was the kitchen, that had been built in the
thirteenth century--and had not had much done to it since,
apparently. Originally, I should say, it had been the torture
chamber; it gave you that idea. I think your mother would have
raised objections to the kitchen--anyhow, when she came to think of
the cook. It would have been necessary to put it to the woman before
engaging her:-
"'You don't mind cooking in a dungeon in the dark, do you?'
"Some cooks would. The rest of the house was what I should describe
as present-day mixed style. The last tenant but one had thrown out a
bathroom in corrugated iron."
"Then there was a house in Berkshire that I took your mother to see,
with a trout stream running through the grounds.
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