The visitor to King’s Barton found his attention wandering several times after this. Mrs. Otter began to drift into rambling stories about her native Cornwall, and it was only Wolf’s power of automatically putting a convincing animation into his heavy countenance that prevented her from realizing how far away his thoughts had flown.

Hostess and guest were interrupted in their rather one-sided tête-à-tête by the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. Mrs. Otter jumped up at once.

“It’s Jason!” she cried. “We must have disturbed him. I was talking too much. I’ll go and tell Dimity she need not clear away. I expect Jason will like to have a smoke with you.”