querulous, feminine outcry, with the words, "Yer's that darned hound
agin!" came from an adjacent room, and his exposed and abashed companion
swiftly retreated past him into the road again. Mr. Ford found himself
alone in a plainly-furnished sitting-room confronting the open door
leading to another apartment at which the figure of a woman, preceded
hastily by a thrown dishcloth, had just appeared. It was Mrs. McKinstry;
her sleeves were rolled up over her red but still shapely arms, and as
she stood there wiping them on her apron, with her elbows advanced,
and her closed hands raised alternately in the air, there was an odd
pugilistic suggestion in her attitude. It was not lessened on her sudden
discovery of the master by her retreating backwards with her hands up
and her elbows still well forward as if warily retiring to an imaginary
"corner."

Mr. Ford at once tactfully stepped back from the doorway. "I beg your
pardon," he said, delicately addressing the opposite wall, "but I found
the door open and I followed the dog."

"That's just one of his pizenous tricks," responded Mrs. McKinstry
dolefully from within. "On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and in the
nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself outer the pork
bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up
to." Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently made
her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her black woollen
dress "tidied," and a smile of fatigued but not unkindly welcome and
protection on her face. Dusting a chair with her apron and placing it
before the master, she continued maternally, "Now that you're here, set
ye right down and make yourself to home. My men folks are all out o'
door, but some of 'em's sure to happen in soon for suthin'; that day
ain't yet created that they don't come huntin' up Mammy McKinstry every