“I’m glad to see you, Mrs. Torp,” he said cheerfully. “How do you do, Dimity? You and I haven’t met for several long days.”

“Hark at him, Mrs. Stone,” gasped Gerda’s mother. “Hark at him, how ’ee do coax a body! He do look and speak just as I was telling ’ee, don’t ’ee, now? If I hadn’t told ’ee, honest to God, how the gentleman spoke, ye’d have never known it, would ’ee, Mrs. Stone?”

The withered face of Mrs. Torp remained turned toward her companion as she uttered this ambiguous welcome. She seemed unable to give Wolf so much as one single glance from her little vixen eyes, over which two artificial pansies, hanging from the battered bonnet on her head, jiggled disconcertingly.