The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched red of its cheeks. The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled with a shameful whine. The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from the broken shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not with any sense worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of the places of parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a scolding.

“ I know your tricks and your manners,” cried Miss Wren. “ I know where you’ve been to!” (which indeed it did not require discernment to discover). “Oh, you disgraceful old chap!”

The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.