The garden gate affords you no better standpoint. It is a solid piece of woodwork, grim and forbidding as a prison door.
If you knock and ring with the idea that the gate will be opened, and you will thus get a glimpse within, you are wofully mistaken.
Your summons may be answered or not, as the case may be. If it is, a small wooden flap at the back of an iron grill is let down, and a face appears blocking up the aperture. The eyes of this face regard you carefully, and if these eyes fail to recognise you the lips move and request to know your business. If your explanation is satisfactory, you may be admitted; if it is not, up goes the wooden flap again with a bang, and silence reigns around.
At the gate of one of these curious and secluded little villas, which by the inscription on the door-posts we learn is called ‘The Lodge,’ and by the brass plate on the door we find is inhabited by Dr. Oliver Birnie, there stands a gentleman whom we have seen before.
He is a tall, good-looking fellow, very shabby about the clothes, and not particularly tidy about the hair and beard.
The face which blocks up the little peephole of The Lodge is a female face of the domestic servant order, and it evidently regards the visitor with some suspicion. There has been a preliminary verbal passage of arms, and the female face is hot and angry-looking.
‘If you can’t tell me your name, I shan’t go and disturb master,’ say the lips.
‘You go and tell your master what I say,’ answers the shabby gentleman—‘that an old friend from abroad wishes to see him.’
The lips move again—this time in a curled-up and scornful manner.
‘People as is ashamed o’ their names ain’t no friends o’ master’s, I’m sure.’