“She’s no asleep. Ye may come in.”
Francis followed her. Tibby planted herself in front of Mrs. Folyat, gave her the note with this:
“From the master.”
(If it had been from the Emperor of Russia she could not have put more reverence into her voice.)
“From the master. This is the gentleman.”
With that she materialised out of her ghostliness and stalked out of the room, and Francis, on whom the humour of the whole household was beginning to dawn, found himself inventing her report to the Master:
“The prisoner has been boiled in oil, but made no confession.”
Mrs. James Lawrie was a large woman with a big face, surprisingly pink and young looking. She had her hair oiled and parted in the middle and surmounted with a tall lace cap adorned with pale-blue ribbons, and skewered on with white china-headed hat-pins that clearly passed through her head and came out on the other side. Her dress was very tight, and seemed to be stretched to breaking-point in the effort to hold in her flesh. From her attitude, certain details of her dress, and a portrait on the wall, it was clear that she prided herself on her resemblance to Queen Victoria, then alive and enjoying all the lustre and celebrity of her Jubilee.
There was another cat on the sofa by the fireplace. In the window was a wire stand full of palms and india-rubber plants and maiden-hair ferns. The windows were closed. The pictures were religious, or views of various seaside resorts and spas, and five pastel drawings of children, and everywhere, on tables, on the piano, on brackets, on the mantelpiece, was a profusion of knick-knacks, cheap china, china ladies, china babies, china shepherdesses, china stags, china birds, and, on a table near where Francis was standing, among various Eastern trivialities, a large elephant’s tooth.
Mrs. Lawrie read her husband’s letter without giving any sign that she was aware of her visitor. Then she said: