The lady approached them. ‘Who is this?’ she said directing her face at Steerpike.
‘This,’ said her brother, ‘is none other than Master Steerpike, who was brought to see me on account of his talents. He is anxious for me to make use of his brain, ha, ha! – not, as you might suppose, as a floating specimen in one of my jam jars, ha, ha, ha! but in its functional capacity as a vortex of dazzling thought.’
‘Did he go upstairs just now?’ said Miss Irma Prunesquallor. ‘I said did he go upstairs just now?’
The tall lady had the habit of speaking at great speed and of repeating her questions irritably before there had been a moment’s pause in which they might be answered. Prunesquallor had in moments of whimsy often amused himself by trying to wedge an answer to her less complex queries between the initial question and its sharp echo.
‘Upstairs, my dear?’ repeated her brother.
‘I said “upstairs”, I think,’ said Irma Prunesquallor sharply. ‘I think I said “upstairs”. Have you, or he, or anyone been upstairs a quarter of an hour ago? Have you? Have you?’
‘Surely not! surely not!’ said the Doctor. ‘We have all been downstairs, I think. Don’t you?’ he said, turning to Steerpike.
‘I do,’ said Steerpike. The Doctor began to like the way the youth answered quietly and neatly.
Irma Prunesquallor drew herself together. Her long tightly fitting black dress gave peculiar emphasis to such major bone formations as the iliac crest, and indeed the entire pelvis; the shoulder blades, and in certain angles, as she stood in the lamplight, to the ribs themselves. Her neck was long and the Prunesquallors’ head sat upon it surrounded by the same grey thatch like hair as that adopted by her brother, but in her case knotted in a low bun at the neck.
‘The servant is out, OUT,’ she said. ‘It is his evening
She seemed to be addressing Steerpike, so he answered: ‘I have no knowledge of the arrangements you have made, madam. But he was in the Doctor’s room a few minutes ago, so I expect it was he whom you heard outside your door.’
‘Who said I heard anything outside
‘Were you not within your room, madam?’
‘What of it? what of it?’
‘I gathered from what you said that you thought that there was someone walking about upstairs,’ answered Steerpike obliquely; ‘and if, as you say, you were
‘You seem to know too much about it. Don’t you? don’t you?’ She bent forward and her opaque-looking glasses stared flatly at Steerpike.
‘I know nothing, madam,’ said Steerpike.
‘What, Irma dear,
‘I heard feet. That is all. Feet,’ said his sister; and then, after a pause she added with renewed emphasis: ‘Feet.’
‘Irma, my dear sister,’ said Prunesquallor, ‘I have two things to say. Firstly, why in the name of discomfort are we hanging around in the hall and probably dying of a draught that as far as I am concerned runs up my right trouser leg and sets my gluteous maximus twitching; and secondly, what is wrong, when you boil the matter down – with feet? I have always found mine singularly useful, especially for walking with. In fact, ha, ha, ha, one might almost imagine that they had been designed for that very purpose.’
‘As usual,’ said his sister, ‘you are drunk with your own levity. You have a brain, Alfred. I have never denied it. Never. But it is undermined by your insufferable levity. I tell you that someone has been prowling about upstairs and you take no notice. There has been no one to prowl. Do you not see the point?’
‘I heard something, too,’ said Steerpike, breaking in. ‘I was sitting in the hall where the Doctor suggested I should remain while he decided in what capacity he would employ me, when I heard what sounded like footsteps upstairs. I crept to the top of the stairs silently, but there was no one there, so I returned.’
Steerpike, thinking the upstairs to be empty, had in reality been making a rough survey of the first floor, until he heard what must have been Irma moving to the door of her room, at which sound he had slid down the banisters.
‘You hear what he says,’ said the lady, following her brother with a stiff irritation in every line of her progress. ‘You hear what he says.’
‘Very much so!’ said the Doctor, ‘Very much so, indeed. Most indigestible.’
Steerpike moved a chair up for Irma Prunesquallor with such a show of consideration for her comfort and such adroitness that she stared at him and her hard mouth relaxed at one corner.
‘Steerpike,’ she said, wrinkling her black dress above her hips as she reclined a little into her chair.
‘I am at your service, madam,’ said Steerpike. ‘What may I do for you?’
‘What on earth are you wearing? What are you wearing, boy?’
