So did the imprecation which his innocent request evoked.

He was bidden to go and keep himself in his own quarters, and not show his face again that day at the New House.
Since Lady Bridget's departure, McKeith had slept, eaten and worked in the Old Humpey, his original dwelling.
But Kuppi did not know that the white ants had not been given a chance to work destruction upon 'the Ladyship's' properties.

Regularly every day, McKeith himself tended those sacred chambers.

Bridget's rooms were just as she had left them.
He had done nothing yet towards dismantling that part of the New House in which she had chiefly lived.

He had put off the task day after day.
But since receiving Moongarr Bill's letter, and now that the drought had broken, and the Man in Possession a prospect as certain as that there would come another thunderstorm, he knew that he must begin his preparations to quit Moongarr.
To do this meant depriving himself of the miserable comfort he found during wakeful nights and the first hour of dawn--the time he usually chose for sweeping and cleaning his wife's rooms--of roaming, ghost-like, through the New House where every object spoke to him of her.