“It’s very wrong to swear,” he said, gravely.
So Hephzibah continued her way, for “Answer not a fool,” she reflected, “according to his folly.” She saw, through the gaunt glitter of the trees, Klomp’s half-detached shutters hanging forlorn. She wondered who had opened them on this usually deserted side. Certainly not Klomp. She smiled grimly. She would put things to rights, as was her custom, and scold him.
She heard voices inside the house, an unknown woman’s voice, and laughter—actually laughter from Klomp, whose utmost exertion in her presence hardly attained to a smile. She pushed open the door and entered, indignant. Some chipped crockery was spread over the crippled table, and behind an odorous paraffine-stove and coffee-pot sat a frowzy female of spurious pretensions to elegance—a female with whom Hephzibah was not acquainted, but whose name was Adeline Skiff. The virtuous Abigail immediately wrote down the stranger “a bad lot,” and less virtue would have sufficed thus correctly to apprise her.
“‘DO YOU KNOW, YOU BOY, WHO COMES FOR CHILDREN THAT STEAL?’”
“Company! Dearie me!” cried Hephzibah, in a whole gamut of spinsterly suspicion. “And where, pray, are Pietje and Mietje, John?”
Klomp yawned.
“Wednesday, is it?” he said. “So much the worse.” After which uncourteous allusion he subsided.
“Let me introduce myself to the lady,” interposed Adeline, all mince and simper. “I am a cousin of Mynheer Klomp’s, and I have come to stay with him for a week or two.”