She waited a little and knocked again; this time came footsteps and the sound of bars coming down and bolts being unshot, the door opened two inches on the chain, and the same pale blue eye and undecided-coloured fringe that had appeared to Mr Bevan, appeared to the now incensed Miss Hancock.
Just as the rabbit peeping from its burrow sees the stoat and recognises its old ancestral enemy, so Susannah, in Miss Hancock, beheld the Foe of herself and all her tribe.
"Is Miss Lambert at home?" asked the visitor sharply.
"Yus, she's in."
"Then open the door, I wish to see her."
Susannah banged the door to, not to exclude the newcomer, but simply to release the chain. Then she opened it again wide, as if to let in an elephant.
Susannah had not presented a particularly spruce appearance on the day when Mr Bevan called and we first met her, but this morning she was simply—awful.
A lock of hair like a bight of half-unravelled cable hung down behind her ear, her old print dress was indescribable, and she had, apparently, some one else's slippers on. She had also the weary air of a person who had been watching in a sick room all the night.
Miss Hancock took this figure in with one snapshot glance; also the hall untidied, the floor undusted, the dust-pan and brush laid on the stairs, a trap for the unwary to step on; the grandfather's clock pointing to quarter to six, and many other things which I have not seen or noticed, but which were clear to Miss Hancock, just as nebulæ and stars which, looking in the direction of I cannot see, are clear to the two-foot reflecting telescope of the Yerkes observatory.