He so far forgot himself as to shake the doors with all his strength
furiously.
And finally he shouted: "Hi there! Hi! Can't you hear?"
Apparently the aged and deaf retainer could not hear. Apparently he was
the deafest retainer that a peeress of the realm ever left in charge of
a princely pile.
"Well, that's a nice thing!" Denry exclaimed, and he noticed that he was
hot and angry. He took a certain pleasure in being angry. He considered
that he had a right to be angry.
At this point he began to work himself up into the state of "not
caring," into the state of despising Sneyd Hall, and everything for
which it stood. As for permitting himself to be impressed or intimidated
by the lonely magnificence of his environment, he laughed at the idea;
or, more accurately, he snorted at it. Scornfully he tramped up and down
those immense interiors, doing the caged lion, and cogitating in quest
of the right dramatic, effective act to perform in the singular crisis.
Unhappily, the carpets were very thick, so that though he could tramp,
he could not stamp; and he desired to stamp. But in the connecting
doorways there were expanses of bare, highly-polished oak floor, and
here he did stamp.
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