"Yes?" said a voice suddenly. And George's head, jerking convulsively, seemed for an instant to have parted company with a loosely-attached neck.
The voice had spoken, he divined as soon as the power of thought returned to him, in response to a sharp and authoritative knock on the door, delivered by some hard instrument which sounded like a policeman's night-stick: and there followed immediately upon this knock sharp and authoritative words.
"Open up there!"
The possessor of the ankles was plainly a girl of spirit.
"I won't," she said. "I'm dressing."
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?"
"Never mind who I am."
"Well, never mind who I am, then!"
There was a pause. It seemed to George, judging the matter dispassionately, that the ankles had had slightly the better of the exchanges to date.