Wolf walked on, but he couldn’t help pondering on the kind of self-centredness that had enabled this old demon to last so long. What would he have made of it if, on some business-trip to London, he had encountered that Waterloo-steps face? Just thought: “That fellow ought to be in the workhouse. They oughtn’t to allow such people here.” Or he would have simply regarded him as part of the station, no more than a door, a post, an iron ornamentation, an advertisement-board!

Very likely this old man was the headmaster’s gardener, and had worked in his day for Miss Gault’s father. Well, which had got the most out of life, Miss Gault, hunched up over there in the pauper’s plot, or this merry old man with his white cat?

Miss Gault loved cats too. Some who loved cats had to eat their sandwiches upon graves. This citizen of Ramsgard had a different destiny.⁠ ⁠…