“Sit ’ee down, Mister. Sit ’ee down, Sir!” cried the man cheerfully. “Give the gentleman a chair, Missus!” He spoke in a tone that implied that his own obesity must be accepted as a pleasant excuse for his retaining a sitting-posture.

But Mrs. Torp had already left the room with a tray; and Wolf, as he seated himself with his face to the girl, could hear the woman muttering viciously to herself and clattering angrily with the plates behind the kitchen-door⁠—a door she seemed to have left open on purpose, so that she might combine the pleasure of listening to the conversation with the pleasure of disturbing it.

“Missus be cantiferous wi’ I ’cos them ’taties be so terrible rotted,” remarked the man, in a loud, hoarse whisper, leaning forward towards his guest and confidentially tapping his knee with his pipe. “And them onions what she been and cooked all morning, she’ve a-boiled all taste out o’ they. Them onions might as well be hog-roots for all the Christian juice what be left in ’un.”