As he did so, he was conscious of two dominant feelings, a sensation of sickening shame, as if he had been caught stealing a piece of silver from the communion-plate, and a puerile thrill of delight to think of Gerda’s pleasure over the carpet, the clock, and the new spoons!

As this event occurred, the countenance of Jason Otter relaxed into a thousand wrinkles. Up went his hand to his mouth, to hide a chuckle worthy of Mukalog himself. But the only comment he uttered was a murmured “Boss-eye!”⁠ ⁠… a preparatory-school expression that had not entered Wolf’s ears since his childhood in Ramsgard.

“May I ask you to close that window again, Otter?” said Mr. Urquhart in his silkiest tone, removing, as he did so, with the tip of his finger, a drop of wine that had trickled down from the outside of the decanter upon the cover of the manuscript.

While Jason was fumbling with the window, Wolf had begun a series of preoccupied pacings, up and down, across and back, over the expanse of the room.