Mr. Fox spoke to Mrs. Fox about her.  “A queer girl,” he said; “what do you suppose is the matter with her?”

“The symptoms are those of green apples,” replied Mrs. Fox, “and probably she will be better to-morrow.”

The carriage came back without Mr. Locker.  But just as the soup-plates were being removed from the dinner-table he arrived in a hired vehicle, and appeared at the dining-room door with his hat in one hand, and a package in the other.  He begged Mrs. Easterfield not to rise.

“I will slip up to my room,” said he, “if you have one for me, and when I come down I will greet you and be introduced.”

With this he turned and left the room, but was back in a moment.  “It was a woman,” he said, “who was at the bottom of it.  It is always a woman, you know, and I am sure you will excuse me now that you know this.  And you must let me begin wherever you may be in the dinner.”

“I have heard of Mr. Locker,” said Mr. Fox, “but I never met him before.  He must be very odd.”

“He admits that himself,” said Mrs. Easterfield, “but he asserts that he spends a great deal of his time getting even with people.”

In a reasonable time Mr. Locker appeared and congratulated himself upon having struck the roast.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “we will now all begin dinner together.  What has gone before was nothing but overture.  If I can help it I never get in until the beginning of the play.”

He bowed parenthetically as Mrs. Easterfield introduced him to the company; and, as she looked at him, Olive forgot for a moment her uncle and his visitor.

“Don’t send for soup, I beg of you,” said Mr. Locker, as he took his seat.  “I regard it as a rare privilege to begin with the inside cut of beef.”

Mr. Locker was not allowed to do all the talking; his hostess would not permit that; but under the circumstances he was allowed to explain his lateness.

“You know I have been spending a week with the Bartons,” he said, “and last night I came over from their house to the station in a carriage.  There is a connecting train, but I should have had to take it very early in the evening, so I saved time by hiring a carriage.”

“Saved time?” exclaimed Mrs. Easterfield.

“I saved all the time from dinner until the Bartons went to bed, which would have been lost if I had taken the train.  Besides, I like to travel in carriages.  One is never too late for a carriage; it is always bound to wait for you.”

In the recesses of his mind Mr. Fox now said to himself, “This is a fool.”  And Mrs. Fox, in the recesses of her mind, remarked, “I am quite sure that Mr. Fox will look upon this young man as a fool.”

“I spent what was left of the night at a tavern near the station,” continued Mr. Locker, “where I would have had to stay all night if I had not taken the carriage.  And I should have been in plenty of time for the morning train if I had not taken a walk before breakfast.  Apparently that is a part of the world where it takes a good deal longer to go back to a place than it does to get away from it.”