ing his Sunday afternoon pipe in
the chimney corner, screened from the open doorway by the three-foot
thickness of the house wall.

Maggie, his servant, planted firmly on the threshold, jerked her head
over her shoulder to call to him.

"There's a yoong laady wants to see yo, Mr. Greatorex!"

There was no response but a sharp tapping on the hob, as Greatorex
knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

Maggie stood looking at Alice a little mournfully with her deep-set,
blue, pathetic eyes. Maggie had once been pretty in spite of her
drab hair and flat features, but where her high color remained it had
hardened with her thirty-five years.

"Well yo' coom?"

Maggie called again and waited. Courageous in her bright blue Sunday
gown, she waited while her master rose, then, shame-faced as if driven
by some sharp sign from him, she slunk into the scullery.

Jim Greatorex appeared on his threshold.

On his threshold, utterly sober, carrying himself with the assurance
of the master in his own house, he would not have suffered by
comparison with any man. Instead of the black broadcloth that Alice
had expected, he wore a loose brown shooting jacket, drab corduroy
breeches, a drab cloth waistcoat and brown leather leggings, and he
wore them with a distinction that Rowcliffe might have envied. His
face, his whole body, alert and upright, had the charm of some shy,
half-savage animal. When he stood at ease his whole face, with all
its features, sensed you and took you in; the quivering eyebrows were
aware of you; the nose, with its short, high bridge, its fine, wide
nostrils, repeated the sensitive stare of the wide eyes; his mouth,
under its golden brown moustache, was somber with a sort of sullen
apprehension, till in a sudden, childlike confidence it smiled. His
whole face and all its features smiled.

He was smiling at Alice now, as if struck all of a sudden by her
smallness.

"I've come to ask a favor, Mr. Greatorex," said Alice.

"Ay," said Greatorex. He said it as if ladies called every day to ask
him favors. "Will you coom in, Miss Cartaret?" It was the mournful
and musical voice that she had heard sometimes last summer on the road
outside the back door of the Vicarage.

She came in, pausing on the threshold and looking about her, as if
she stood poised on the edge of an adventure. Her smallness, and the
delicious, exploring air of her melted Jim's heart and made him smile
at her.

"It's a roough plaace fer a laady