'Well, MR HESSIAN!' she exclaimed, her face bursting into a swift and welcoming smile.
'I was just passing,' the donkey in him blundered forth. 'And I thought—'
However, in fifteen seconds he was on the domestic side of the sitting-room window, and seated in the antimacassared armchair between the fire-place and the piano, and Annie had taken his hat and told him that her servant was out for the evening.
'But I'm disturbing your supper, Miss Emery,' he said. Flurried though he was, he could not fail to notice the white embroidered cloth spread diagonally on the table, and the cold meat and the pastry and the glittering cutlery and crystal thereon.
'Not at all,' she replied. 'You haven't had supper yet, I expect?'
'No,' he said, not thinking.
'It will be nice of you to help me to eat mine,' said she.
'Oh! But really—'
But she got plates and things out of the cupboard below the bookcase—and there he was! She would take no refusal. It was wondrous.
'I'm awfully glad I came now,' his thought ran; I'm managing it rather well.'