We were puzzled at this odd reception. I looked at Charles with doubt written clearly on my face.
“The Dwarf has made some mistake,” he began. But the rattle of bolts and chains interrupted him and the head with the nightcap poked itself sooner than we had expected through the chink in the door.
We stepped over the threshold. There was hardly a ray of the sun’s light in the room. Besides, the odor that struck our nostrils made us draw back. We saw now, indistinctly of course, the man who had spoken to us from the window. He was clad in a long loose nightgown of a dirty flannel and had a bend to his shoulders like the curve in a pot. His jaw seemed to have no firmness for it hung loose in his head and twisted from side to side with the motion of a cow chewing its cud. His eyes were small and as sharp as a fox’s like two cunning little beads. And when he pulled off his cap with the tassel to it, to make us a kind of salutation, a great shock of unkempt greasy hair fell down over his neck.
“I am glad to welcome you to my house, sirs,” he said with his voice reaching a high piping note.
I looked to Charles to hear what he would say, for to tell the truth I was now even more anxious to get away from this hole than I was before bent on getting in.
“Do you know the Dwarf of Angers?” he demanded.
The old man started to rub his hands in one another and stuck out his chin. A slow encouraging grin spread over his face.
“Of course I do,” he said and repeated it. “Why of course I do. Are you a friend of his, too?” he ended with a snap.
“He sent us here,” continued Charles. “We have enemies. He told us you would give us help.”
At this the man leaned forward and peered closely into our faces. Then he began to laugh in the same cackling tone that I had heard from the window. He stepped to one side and bowed almost to the floor and made a motion with a sweep of his hand.