This is his home, this little dingy, old-fashioned red-brick house at an angle of the square, with a small paved space railed in before it. He pushes open the old gate with the iron arch above, where an oil-lamp used to hang, and hurries up to the door with the heavy shell-shaped porch, impatient to get to the warmth and light which await him within.
The bell has got out of order, for only a faint jangle comes from below as he rings; he waits a little and then pulls the handle again, more sharply this time, and still no one comes.
When Betty does think proper to come up and open the door he will tell her that it is too bad keeping a fellow standing out here, in the fog and cold, all this time.... She is coming at last—no, it was fancy; it seems as if Betty had slipped out for something, and perhaps the cook is upstairs, and his mother may be dozing by the fire, as she has begun to do of late.
Losing all patience, he gropes for the knocker, and, groping in vain, begins to hammer with bare fists on the door, louder and louder, until he is interrupted by a rough voice from the railings behind him.
'Now then, what are you up to there, eh?' says the voice, which belongs to a burly policeman who has stopped suspiciously on the pavement.
'Why,' says Rolleston, 'I want to get in, and I can't make them hear me. I wish you'd try what you can do, will you?'
The policeman comes slowly in to the gate. 'I dessay,' he says jocularly. 'Is there anythink else? Come, suppose you move on.'
A curious kind of dread of he knows not what begins to creep over Wilfred at this.
'Move on?' he cries, 'why should I move on? This is my house; don't you see? I live here.'
'Now look 'ere, my joker, I don't want a job over this,' says the constable, stolidly. 'You'll bring a crowd round in another minute if you keep on that 'ammering.'