There was such a hubbub of voices issuing from the drawing-room of Pond Cottage, that with a sulky motion of the muscles of his chin, repeated several times as he stumbled over the flowerbeds, he went round the house to the backdoor. There, at his petulant tap, Dimity Stone let him in. “Mis‑ter So‑lent!” the old crone exclaimed, in her most quavering voice. “And where, for Lawky’s sake, be Master Darnley? Sit ’ee down, Mister Solent, while I gets me breath. These goings-on do daunt a body terrible. ’Tis first one thing, ’sknow; and then be another! First there be talk of a cold bite o’ summat to save I trouble. Then what do Master Jason do but come wambling in about hotting up they wedding-pasties what I’ve hid all day from they since a week agone, ’cept what Miss Olwen coaxed out of I.”

The old woman kept shuffling her utensils about, as she spoke, from one orifice to another of her vast kitchen-stove. A most fragrant steam emerged from more than one lid; and Wolf, as he sat on a hard chair, with one limp hand dangling his stick and the other dangling his hat, was aware of a pang of extreme hunger.