CHAPTER XI
ANOTHER CALL
Mrs. Prockter was compelled to ask for admission, because James, struck moveless and speechless by the extraordinary sight of her, offered no invitation to enter. He merely stood in front of the half-opened door.
"May I come in, Mr. Ollerenshaw?" she said, very urbanely. "I hope you will excuse this very informal call. I've altered my dinner hour in order to pay it."
And she smiled. The smile seemed to rouse him from a spell.
"Come in, missis, do!" he conjured her, warmly.
He was James; he was even Jimmy; but he was also a man, very much a man, though the fact had only recently begun to impress itself on him. Mrs. Prockter, while a dowager—portly, possibly fussy, perhaps slightly comic to a younger generation—was still considerably younger than James. With her rich figure, her excellent complexion, her carefully-cherished hair, and her apparel, she was a woman to captivate a man of sixty, whose practical experience of the sex extended over nine days.
"Thank you," said she, gratefully.
He shut the front door, as if he were shutting a bird in a cage; and he also shut the door leading to the kitchen—a door which had not been shut since the kitchen fire smoked in the celebrated winter of 1897. She sat down at once in the easy-chair.