One gleam of hope alone presented itself.  Like baseball, this pastime of cricket was apparently affected by rain, if there had been enough of it.  He had an idea that there had been a good deal of rain in the night, but had there been sufficient to cause the teams of Surrey and Kent to postpone the second instalment of their serial struggle?  He rose from the table and went out into the hall.  It was his purpose to sally out into Grosvenor Square and examine the turf in its centre with the heel of his shoe, in order to determine the stickiness or non-stickiness of the wicket.  He moved towards the front door, hoping for the best, and just as he reached it the bell rang.

One of the bad habits of which his wife had cured Mr. Crocker in the course of the years was the habit of going and answering doors.  He had been brought up in surroundings where every man was his own door-keeper, and it had been among his hardest tasks to learn the lesson that the perfect gentleman does not open doors but waits for the appropriate menial to come along and do it for him.  He had succeeded at length in mastering this great truth, and nowadays seldom offended.  But this morning his mind was clouded by his troubles, and instinct, allaying itself with opportunity, was too much for him.  His fingers had been on the handle when the ring came, so he turned it.

At the top of the steps which connect the main entrance of Drexdale House with the sidewalk three persons were standing.  One was a tall and formidably handsome woman in the early forties whose appearance seemed somehow oddly familiar.  The second was a small, fat, blobby, bulging boy who was chewing something.  The third, lurking diffidently in the rear, was a little man of about Mr. Crocker’s own age, grey-haired and thin with brown eyes that gazed meekly through rimless glasses.

Nobody could have been less obtrusive than this person, yet it was he who gripped Mr. Crocker’s attention and caused that home-sick sufferer’s heart to give an almost painful leap.  For he was clothed in one of those roomy suits with square shoulders which to the seeing eye are as republican as the Stars and Stripes.  His blunt-toed yellow shoes sang gaily of home.  And his hat was not so much a hat as an effusive greeting from Gotham.  A long time had passed since Mr. Crocker had set eyes upon a biped so exhilaratingly American, and rapture held him speechless, as one who after long exile beholds some landmark of his childhood.

The female member of the party took advantage of his dumbness—­which, as she had not unnaturally mistaken him for the butler, she took for a silent and respectful query as to her business and wishes—­to open the conversation.

“Is Mrs. Crocker at home?  Please tell her that Mrs. Pett wishes to see her.”