n.

Mr. Brumley darted forward; tried the door and turned quickly. "It's
locked," he said and barred Lady Beach-Mandarin's advance.

"And besides," said Lady Harman, "there's no mushrooms there. They won't
come up. It's one of my husband's--annoyances."

Lady Beach-Mandarin had turned round and now surveyed the house. "What a
splendid idea," she cried, "that wistaria! All mixed with the laburnum.
I don't think I have ever seen such a charming combination of blossoms!"

The whole movement of the party swept about and faced cypress-ward. Away
there the sandy-whiskered butler and a footman and basket chairs and a
tea-table, with a shining white cloth, and two ladies were now grouping
themselves....

But the mind of Mr. Brumley gave little heed to these things. His mind
was full of a wonder, and the wonder was this, that the mushroom shed
had behaved like a living thing. The door of the mushroom shed was not
locked and in that matter he had told a lie. The door of the mushroom
shed had been unlocked quite recently and the key and padlock had been
dropped upon the ground. And when he had tried to open the mushroom shed
it had first of all yielded to his hand and then it had closed again
with great strength--exactly as a living mussel will behave if one takes
it unawares. But in addition to this passionate contraction the mushroom
shed had sworn in a hoarse whisper and breathed hard, which is more than
your mussel can do....

Sec.3

Mr. Brumley's interest in Lady Harman was to be almost too crowded by
detail before that impulsive call was over. Superposed upon the mystery
of the mushroom shed was the vivid illumination of Lady Harman by her
mother and sister. They had an effect of having reluctantly become her
social inferiors for her own good; the mother--her name he learnt was
Mrs. Sawbridge--had all Lady Harman's tall slenderness, but otherwise
resembled her only in the poise of her neck and an occasional gesture;
she was fair and with a kind of ignoble and premeditated refinement in
her speech and manner. She was dressed with the restraint of a prolonged
and attenuated widowhood, in a rich and complicatedly quiet dress of
mauve and grey. She was obviously a transitory visitor and not so much
taking the opulence about her and particularly the great butler for
granted as pointedly and persistently ignoring it in an effort to seem
to take it for granted. The sister, on the other hand, had Lady Harman's
pale darknes