“There’s something in what you say, sweetheart,” he muttered aloud; and he began wrapping himself in his dressing-gown and tightening it round him in the way he liked to do, preparatory to opening the door. “Don’t get the idea I’m going to be silly or obstinate!” he added. “We’ll discuss it all later.”

There seemed to be a cold wind from the east that morning; and Wolf, when he reached the kitchen, was glad enough to find the stove still alight. But just for the sake of getting into the air he unbolted the backdoor and shuffled in his slippers across the yard. “I’ll fetch two or three pieces of wood,” he thought. The shock of the east wind cutting at his lean frame and whistling past it as if it had been the post of a clothesline, roused a grim and yet an exuberant feeling in him that sent him back to the kitchen in high spirits.

“Ay!” he thought, “how it all depends on these little things! What was that that Mother told me about Carfax? That he used to ‘play’ with these accidents, like a fisherman with a trout, making ’em serve his sensations!”