"It don't matter. May as well stop, now you are here," said Mrs. Cragg. "He'll be down directly. He's always slow. That's his way."
She had meant to go out this side to save time, but, on second thoughts, she turned back and met her husband.
"Well, I hope you've been long enough," was her greeting. "It's somebody after that new house of yours; and if I was you I wouldn't have anything to do with him. He's as shabby as shabby. Got on a coat that shines like anything, and a pair of gloves that our cook wouldn't look at. And I should think his trousers was made at a slop-shop. If you let him have that house, you won't get any rent for it."
"It isn't always the finest-dressed folks that pay their bills the quickest," replied Cragg, with a wisdom born of experience.
"He won't. You see if I'm not right." Mrs. Cragg liked to be always in the right, and seldom admitted that she was not. Having once committed herself to this particular view of the question, she was certain not to regard the tall man in future with favourable eyes. Cragg knew this, but he said nothing.
"You see!" repeated Mrs. Cragg, "I know a man that can't be depended on when I come across him. He's as poor as a church-mouse, and he wants to get a house rent-free. If you take my advice, you'll pack him off in a hurry."
Cragg was not in the habit of taking a woman's advice in matters of business, though he obtained plenty of it, gratis, from his wife. Her opinion, given lavishly and unasked on all occasions, lost value from its abundance.
Mrs. Cragg passed on, and Mr. Cragg finished the descent of the stairs, with the air of a man who prided himself on being never in a hurry.
"Good morning. This way, please," he said, and he led the strangers to a room behind the warehouse.
Cragg was a vendor of new and secondhand furniture, and indeed of everything required in house-plenishing. The main warehouse, or shop, which opened on the High Street, was full of furniture of all kinds, piled together, with lanes amid the piles. This lesser room in its rear held rolls of carpets and heaps of rugs. One chair stood in the middle, and upon it the newcomer slowly lowered himself, with a sigh of relief, as if he had had enough walking. The girl leant against him, drooping her head, as she had done all along, so that the wide-brimmed hat hid her face. From her height Cragg supposed her to be about thirteen years old, but he did not pay much attention to that matter.