mopped her forehead with a greasy apron. "I've warned her, that's
all, and I mean her well, little as she deserves it. Now, you,
Moggie, don't stand gahpin' there git them breakfast things washed
up, can't you? It'll be tea time agin before the beds is made. And
what's come to _you_ this morning?"

She addressed Mr. Gammon, who had seated himself on a corner of the
table, as if to watch and listen. He was a short, thick-set man with
dark, wiry hair roughened into innumerable curls, and similar
whiskers ending in a clean razor-line halfway down the cheek. His
eyes were blue and had a wondering innocence, which seemed partly
the result of facetious affectation, as also was the peculiar curve
of his lips, ever ready for joke or laughter. Yet the broad, mobile
countenance had lines of shrewdness and of strength, plain enough
whenever it relapsed into gravity, and the rude shaping of jaw and
chin might have warned anyone disposed to take advantage of the
man's good nature. He wore a suit of coarse tweed, a brown bowler
hat, a blue cotton shirt with white stock and horseshoe pin, rough
brown leggings, tan boots, and in his hand was a dog-whip. This
costume signified that Mr. Gammon felt at leisure, contrasting as
strongly as possible with the garb in which he was wont to go about
his ordinary business--that of commercial traveller. He had a liking
for dogs, and kept a number of them in the back premises of an inn
at Dulwich, whither he usually repaired on Sundays. When at Dulwich,
Mr. Gammon fancied himself in completely rural seclusion; it seemed
to him that he had shaken off the dust of cities, that he was far
from the clamour of the crowd, amid peace and simplicity; hence his
rustic attire, in which he was fond of being photographed with dogs
about him. A true-born child of town, he would have found the real
country quite unendurable; in his doggy rambles about Dulwich he