“Scr-ruff!  Thou naughty dog—­the baddest dog!” The ends of her hair fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said: 

“Not at all!  Let me give him some bread.”

“Oh no!  You must not—­I will beat him—­and tell him he is bad; then he shall not do such things again.  Now he is sulky; he looks so always when he is sulky.  Is this your home?”

“For the present; I am a visitor.”

“But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it.”

“Certainly, I am a Tyroler.”

“I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much —­because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister, Christian, is all English.  Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very angry with me.”

And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again looked ruefully at Harz.

There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel chain on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black kid gloves, rather white about the seams.

Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth twisted at one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and narrow, rather to one side, and wore on it a look of apology.  Her quick sentences sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to draw them back as soon as she had let them forth.

“Greta, how can, you do such things?  I don’t know what your father would say!  I am sure I don’t know how to—­so extraordinary—­”

“Please!” said Harz.

“You must come at once—­so very sorry—­so awkward!” They were standing in a ring:  Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the little lady fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her eyes all dewy, twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.

“Oh, look!” The coffee had boiled over.  Little brown streams trickled spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and tail tucked in, went scurrying round the room.  A feeling of fellowship fell on them at once.

“Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff—­so awkward, so unfortunate—­we did not think any one lived here—­the shutters are cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully.  Have you been long in Botzen?  Two months?  Fancy!  You are not English?  You are Tyrolese?  But you speak English so well—­there for seven years?  Really?  So fortunate!—­It is Greta’s day for English.”

Miss Naylor’s eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain—­relic of the time when the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfnished figure of the nude.