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“This is Joseph?” she asked as he took off his cap on the threshold. “You’re late. I’ve been expecting you for a quarter of an hour and breakfast is stone-cold likely. Come in, please, and don’t keep the door open. Take your bag right upstairs. It’s the first room to the left. When you’ve washed, and dear knows you need it, come right down again. I dislike very much having folks late to their meals.”

During this announcement, uttered levelly in a sharp voice, she shook hands rather limply, closed the door, pushed the rug straight again with the toe of a sensible boot and smoothed the front of her black merino gown. That black gown was the only thing that didn’t fit in with his picture of her and he rather resented it as, tugging his bag behind him, he went up the narrow, squeaky staircase. That colourless gingham he had mentally attired her in would, he thought, have been less depressing than the black merino.

The room in which he found himself was small, but, in spite of the cheerless weather outside, bright and homelike. There were some surprisingly gay cretonne curtains at the two windows, the paper was blue-and-white in a neat pattern, the brass knobs of the single bed shone like globes of gold, and Joe noted with approval that the gaslight was convenient to the old-fashioned mahogany, drop-front desk. On the table at the head of the bed were three books, disputing the small surface with a candlestick and a match-safe, and while he hurriedly prepared for breakfast he stole time to examine the titles. “Every Boy’s Handy Book,” he read, “Self-Help,” “Leather Stocking Tales.” He smiled as he turned away. On the walnut bureau—it had a marble slab and an oval mirror and a lidded box at each side—was a Bible. He made a quick toilet and returned downstairs. A pleasant fragrance of coffee guided him to the dining-room. Aunt Sarah was already in place and a large black cat was asleep on a chair between the windows.