There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired terrier dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows.  He sniffed at Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a sharp bark.  A young voice called: 

“Scruff!  Thou naughty dog!” Light footsteps were heard on the stairs; from the distance a thin, high voice called: 

“Greta!  You mustn’t go up there!”

A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed hat, slipped in.

Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up.  That face was not regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was flattish; there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical, shy.

“Oh!” she said.

Harz smiled:  “Good-morning!  This your dog?”

She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then running to the dog seized him by the collar.

“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.