The new temporary boarder, or visitor, Barry Mafferty, suddenly began to laugh. The old boarders, at the entrance of the Judge, had been suddenly stricken with bashfulness. This poorly dressed, brown-faced man of middle age had alone preserved his composure. After a slight bow he had taken an unlighted cigarette from his mouth, had calmly looked the Judge over, from his white head to his black overshoes, had bestowed a slight glance of admiration on the half-open, fur-lined coat, and had then again directed his attention to the red-hot bars of the grate in front of the old-fashioned cooking-stove.
Now, as if irresistibly amused by the passage-at-arms between the gentleman and the flippant child of poverty, he did not try to conceal his amusement.
The Judge turned to him.
“Don’t worry yourself, sir,” said Mafferty, easily, “things will all come out right. Our hostess is a good sort.”
The Judge stared. Who was this man?
“Broken down gentleman,” said Mafferty, still more easily; “lots of time to study human nature. I have seen the child you took. I advise you to hold on to her if you value a nice child. She belongs to a different rank in society from these—” and he raised his hand comprehensively at the Tingsby children.
The smart girl immediately turned her attention upon him.
“Easy now, easy,” he said, coolly, nodding his really fine-featured head at her. “Easy, or you will upset your basket of china.”
“China,” she cried, in a fine, thin voice, curiously like her mother’s, “what do you know of china, you low-down, gutter-raggy, broken-weazled, shilly-shally—”
Mafferty began to laugh again, and such is the power of a long drawn-out, hearty, sustained peal of laughter in which there is nothing nervous, nothing satirical, nothing to wound, that one by one his listeners began to join him.