He had not even been to the bank!

And the greatest sensation of all the nightmarish days was still in reserve for him.  At a quarter-past eight some one knocked at the door.  He opened it, being handier than the new servant.  He imagined himself ready for anything; but he was not ready for the apparition which met him on the threshold.

Mrs. Prockter, of Hillport, asked to be admitted!

CHAPTER XI

ANOTHER CALL

Mrs. Prockter was compelled to ask for admission, because James, struck moveless and speechless by the extraordinary sight of her, offered no invitation to enter.  He merely stood in front of the half-opened door.

“May I come in, Mr. Ollerenshaw?” she said, very urbanely.  “I hope you will excuse this very informal call.  I’ve altered my dinner hour in order to pay it.”

And she smiled.  The smile seemed to rouse him from a spell.

“Come in, missis, do!” he conjured her, warmly.

He was James; he was even Jimmy; but he was also a man, very much a man, though the fact had only recently begun to impress itself on him.  Mrs. Prockter, while a dowager—­portly, possibly fussy, perhaps slightly comic to a younger generation—­was still considerably younger than James.  With her rich figure, her excellent complexion, her carefully-cherished hair, and her apparel, she was a woman to captivate a man of sixty, whose practical experience of the sex extended over nine days.

“Thank you,” said she, gratefully.

He shut the front door, as if he were shutting a bird in a cage; and he also shut the door leading to the kitchen—­a door which had not been shut since the kitchen fire smoked in the celebrated winter of 1897.  She sat down at once in the easy-chair.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, in relief.  And then she began to fan herself with a fan which was fastened to her person by a chain that might have moored a steamer.

James, searching about for something else to do while he was collecting his forces, drew the blind and lighted the gas.  But it was not yet dark.

“I wonder what you will think of me, calling like this?” she said, with a sardonic smile.

It was apparent that, whatever he thought of her, she would not be disturbed or abashed.  She was utterly at her ease.  She could not, indeed, have recalled the moment when she had not been at her ease.  She sat in the front room with all the external symptoms of being at home.  This was what chiefly surprised James Ollerenshaw in his grand guests—­they all took his front room for granted.  They betrayed no emotion at its smallness or its plainness, or its eccentricities.  He would somehow have expected them to signify, overtly or covertly, that that kind of room was not the kind of room to which they were accustomed.

“Anyhow, I’m glad to see ye, Mrs. Prockter,” James returned.