The young man moved back his chair to its first position in order to restore the status quo.
Harriet shook her head. And then all at once, to the deep consternation of Constable Maclean, she broke into an anguish of laughter, which good manners, try as they might, were not able to control.
IV
In the midst of this unseemly behavior on the part of Miss Sanderson, the door next the street was flung open with violence. A figure Homeric of aspect emerged from the night.
It was that of Constable Joseph Kelly, of the Metropolitan Police; an ornament of the X Division, a splendid man to look at, nearly six feet high. Broad of girth, proportioned finely, his helmet crowned him like a hero of old. His face, richly tinted by daily and nightly exposure to the remarkable climate of London, was the color of a ripe apple, and there presided in it the almost god-like good-humor of the race to which he belonged.
This emblem of superb manhood was laden heavily. There was his long overcoat, a tremendous, swelling affair; there was his furled oilskin cape; at one side of his girdle was his truncheon-case, his lamp at the other side of it; in his left hand was a modest basket which had contained his dinner, and in his right was a larger wicker arrangement which might have contained anything.
“Is that our Harriet?” said Constable Kelly, in the act of closing the door deftly with his heel. “Good evening, gal. Pleased to see you.”
He set down the large basket on the floor in a rather gingerly manner, placed the small one on the table, came to Harriet, kissed her audibly, and then turned to the room’s second occupant with an air of surprise.
“Hello, Scotchie! What are you doing here?”
Before Dugald Maclean could answer the question he was in the throes of a second attack of dumb madness. This malady made his life a burden. When only one person was by he seldom had difficulty in expressing himself, but any addition to the company was apt to plunge him into hopeless defeat.