"I don't talk English? What do I talk then—Dutch? What's the matter with you?"
"Oh, I'm just studying grammar, that's all. Now you see I don't need to go to school, the way you said. Mamsy teaches me every night."
"Oh, she does, does she? Well, well! I hear she has a fine education; some say she's went to college, even."
"Yes, she has. She went to a woman's college in the East, once."
"Then what's she living in this pigsty for, I'd like to know! It beats all, this room does. Let me come in for a moment and just look round a bit, will you? I won't touch nothing at all, sure."
The boy protested, and it might have come to a physical struggle had not footsteps been heard coming up the narrow stairway. The visitor peered over the railing of the balusters.
"That's her!" she whispered hoarsely.
A head, rising, looked between the balusters, like a wild animal gazing through the bars of its cage. It was the head of a woman of twenty-seven or eight, and though her face had a strange, wild expression, with staring eyes, she was, or had undoubtedly been, a lady. Her hair, prematurely gray, was parted in the center and brought down in waves over her ears. Her eyebrows, in vivid contrast, were black; and between them a single vertical line cleft her forehead. What might have been a rare beauty was now distorted into something fantastic and mysterious, though when at rare intervals she smiled, a veil seemed to be drawn aside and she became an engaging, familiar, warm-hearted woman. She was dressed in a brilliant red gown and dolman of mosaic cloth with a Tyrolean hat of the period. Such striking color was, thirty years ago, uncommon upon the streets, but, even had it been more usual, the severity of her costume with neither a bustle nor the elaborate ruffles and trimmings then in vogue, would have made her conspicuous.
She came up, with a white face, gasping for breath after her climb, one hand to her heart. For a moment she seemed unable to speak. Then suddenly and sharply she said:
"Francis, shut the door!"