This new Peter intimidated her.
CHAPTER XXIV
SENSATIONAL TURNING OF A WORM
To this remarkable metamorphosis in Mr. Peter Pett several causes
had contributed. In the first place, the sudden dismissal of
Jerry Mitchell had obliged him to go two days without the
physical exercises to which his system had become accustomed, and
this had produced a heavy, irritable condition of body and mind.
He had brooded on the injustice of his lot until he had almost
worked himself up to rebellion. And then, as sometimes happened
with him when he was out of sorts, a touch of gout came to add to
his troubles. Being a patient man by nature, he might have borne
up against these trials, had he been granted an adequate night's
rest. But, just as he had dropped off after tossing restlessly
for two hours, things had begun to happen noisily in the library.
He awoke to a vague realisation of tumult below.
Such was the morose condition of his mind as the result of his
misfortune that at first not even the cries for help could
interest him sufficiently to induce him to leave his bed. He knew
that walking in his present state would be painful, and he
declined to submit to any more pain just because some party
unknown was apparently being murdered in his library. It was not
until the shrill barking of the dog Aida penetrated right in
among his nerve-centres and began to tie them into knots that he
found himself compelled to descend.
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