Free Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers

somewhere-or-other on the Continent. She hoped that, after his struggles with the woodshed, he would find a good, roaring fire to greet him and be able to eat his belated meal in comfort.
     
    *****
     
      Peter Wimsey rather hoped so, too. It took a long time to clear the woodshed, which contained not very much wood but an infinite quantity of things like dilapidated mangles and wheelbarrows, together with the remains of an old pony-trap, several disused grates, and a galvanised iron boiler with a hole in it. But he had his doubts about the weather, and was indisposed to allow Mrs Merdle (the ninth Daimler of that name) to stand out all night. When he thought of his lady’s expressed preference for haystacks, he sang songs in the French language; but from time to time he stopped singing and wondered whether, after all, she might not have been happier at the Hotel Gigantic somewhere-or-other on the Continent.
      The church clock down in the village was chiming the three-quarters before eleven when he finally coaxed Mrs Merdle into her new quarters and re-entered the house, brushing the cobwebs from his hands. As he passed the threshold a thick cloud of smoke caught him by the throat and choked him. Pressing on, nevertheless, he arrived at the door of the kitchen, where a first hasty glance convinced him that the house was on fire. Recoiling into the sitting-room, he found himself enveloped in a kind of London fog, through which he dimly descried dark forms struggling about the hearth like genies of the mist. He said ‘Hallo!’ and was instantly seized by a fit of coughing. Out of the thick rolls of smoke came a figure that he vaguely remembered promising to love and cherish at some earlier period in the day. Her eyes were streaming and her progress blind. He extended an arm, and they coughed convulsively together.
      ‘Oh, Peter!’ said Harriet. ‘I think all the chimneys are bewitched.’
      The windows in the sitting-room had been opened and the draught brought fresh smoke billowing out into the passage. With it came Bunter, staggering but still in possession of his faculties, and flung wide both the front door and the back. Harriet reeled out into the sweet cold air of the porch and sat down on a seat to recover herself. When she could see and breathe again, she made her way back to the sitting-room, only to meet Peter coming out of the kitchen in his shirt-sleeves.
      ‘It’s no go,’ said his lordship. ‘No can do. Those chimneys are blocked. I’ve been inside both of them and you can’t see a single star and there’s about fifteen bushels of soot in the kitchen chimney-ledges, because I felt it.’ (As indeed his right arm bore witness.) ‘I shouldn’t think they’d been swept for twenty years.’
      ‘They ain’t been swep’ in my memory,’ said Mrs Ruddle, ‘and I’ve lived in that cottage eleven year come next Christmas quarter-day.’
      ‘Then it’s time they were,’ said Peter, briskly. ‘Send for the sweep tomorrow, Bunter. Heat up some of the turtle soup on the oil-stove and give us the foie gras , the quails in aspic and a bottle of hock in the kitchen.’
      ‘Certainly, my lord.’
      ‘And I want a wash. Did I see a kettle in the kitchen?’
      ‘Yes, m’lord,’ quavered Mrs Ruddle. ‘Oh, yes—a beautiful kittle as ’ot as ’ot. And if I was jest to put the bed down before the Beetrice in the settin’-room and git the clean sheets on—’
      Peter fled with the kettle into the scullery, whither his bride pursued him. ‘Peter, I’m past apologising for my ideal home.’
      ‘Apologise if you dare—and embrace me at your peril. I am as black as Belloc’s scorpion. He is a most unpleasant brute to find in bed at night.’
      ‘Among the clean sheets. And, Peter—oh, Peter! the ballad was right. It is a goosefeather bed!’

Chapter III. Jordan River
     
      The feast with gluttonous delays
      Is eaten ...
      ... night is come; and yet we