Meanwhile, the collie and the setter had drawn near to each other; five feet apart they paused as if by mutual consent.  The collie turned sidewise to the setter; the setter instantly wheeled himself flank on to the collie.  Their tails rose and stiffened, they raised their lips over their long white fangs, the napes of their necks bristled, and they showed each other the vicious whites of their eyes, while they drew in their breaths with prolonged and rasping snarls.  Each dog seemed to be the personification of fury and unsatisfied hate.  They began to circle about each other with infinite slowness, walking stiffed-legged and upon the very points of their feet.  Then they wheeled about and began to circle in the opposite direction.  Twice they repeated this motion, their snarls growing louder.  But still they did not come together, and the distance of five feet between them was maintained with an almost mathematical precision.  It was magnificent, but it was not war.  Then the setter, pausing in his walk, turned his head slowly from his enemy.  The collie sniffed the air and pretended an interest in an old shoe lying in the gutter.  Gradually and with all the dignity of monarchs they moved away from each other.  Alexander stalked back to the corner of the street.  The collie paced toward the side gate whence he had issued, affecting to remember something of great importance.  They disappeared.  Once out of sight of one another they began to bark furiously.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Trina in great disgust.  “The way those two dogs have been carrying on you’d ‘a’ thought they would ‘a’ just torn each other to pieces when they had the chance, and here I’m wasting the whole morning——­” she closed her window with a bang.

“Sick ’im, sick ’im,” called Maria Macapa, in a vain attempt to promote a fight.

Old Miss Baker came out of the vestibule, pursing her lips, quite put out at the fiasco.  “And after all that fuss,” she said to herself aggrievedly.

The little dressmaker bought an envelope of nasturtium seeds at the florist’s, and returned to her tiny room in the flat.  But as she slowly mounted the first flight of steps she suddenly came face to face with Old Grannis, who was coming down.  It was between eight and nine, and he was on his way to his little dog hospital, no doubt.  Instantly Miss Baker was seized with trepidation, her curious little false curls shook, a faint—­a very faint—­flush came into her withered cheeks, and her heart beat so violently under the worsted shawl that she felt obliged to shift the market-basket to her other arm and put out her free hand to steady herself against the rail.

On his part, Old Grannis was instantly overwhelmed with confusion.  His awkwardness seemed to paralyze his limbs, his lips twitched and turned dry, his hand went tremblingly to his chin.  But what added to Miss Baker’s miserable embarrassment on this occasion was the fact that the old Englishman should meet her thus, carrying a sordid market-basket full of sordid fish and cabbage.  It seemed as if a malicious fate persisted in bringing the two old people face to face at the most inopportune moments.