“Nance, you torment!”
But the head that appears above the stair-railing is not the head of a female, and it is a masculine voice that says, in an undertone:
“Sh-h! Old woman, let me in, and don’t make a fuss.”
The woman starts back and is about to close the door, when something in the appearance of the man arrests her attention.
As he halts at the top of the stairway, the light from the door reveals to her a shock of close-curling, carroty-red hair.
In another moment he stands with a hand on either door-post.
“How are ye, old uns? Governor, how are ye?”—[page 194].
“How are ye’ old uns?” he says, with a grin. “Governor, how are ye?” And then, with a leer, and a lurch which betrays the fact that he is half intoxicated, he adds, in a voice indicative of stupid astonishment: “Why, I’m blowed, the blessed old fakers don’t know their own young un!”