He was actually at the door, when Mr Kirby added—
"Professor Higginson, I 've half promised some friends to ask you to dine in London after your lecture. It was a great liberty—but they knew I lived in Ormeston. I wonder whether I might presume? Shall I drop you a line? It 's the Rockingham. I might tell you something then. I might find out."
"Yes," said Professor Higginson with no enthusiasm, but he badly wanted to see that house and search it for that haunting scrap of paper, and he didn't want to lose touch with the Order to View, "yes, by all means."
"You see," added Mr. Kirby apologetically, "by the time you come to dine with me in London on Wednesday I might be able to suggest a lot of things—an almost unfurnished downstairs room with a big deal table in it, and oaken stairs, uncarpeted, and, oh! all the sort of things that you would expect in a house of that kind."
"Yes," said Professor Higginson, flabbergasted.
"Well, well," said Mr. Kirby more cheerfully, and shaking him cordially by the hand, "
