“I can’t help that,” cried the woman, in a rude voice.  “I tell you that she can’t see you.”

We stood irresolute for a minute.

“Maybe you would just tell her I am here,” said Jim, at last.

“Tell her!  How am I to tell her when she couldn’t so much as hear a pistol in her ears?  Try and tell her yourself, if you have a mind to.”

She threw open a door as she spoke, and there, in a reclining chair at the further end of the room, we caught a glimpse of a figure all lumped together, huge and shapeless, with tails of black hair hanging down.

The sound of dreadful, swine-like breathing fell upon our ears.  It was but a glance, and then we were off hot-foot for home.  As for me, I was so young that I was not sure whether this was funny or terrible; but when I looked at Jim to see how he took it, he was looking quite white and ill.

“You’ll not tell any one, Roddy,” said he.

“Not unless it’s my mother.”

“I won’t even tell my uncle.  I’ll say she was ill, the poor lady! it’s enough that we should have seen her in her shame, without its being the gossip of the village.  It makes me feel sick and heavy at heart.”

“She was so yesterday, Jim.”

“Was she?  I never marked it.  But I know that she has kind eyes and a kind heart, for I saw the one in the other when she looked at me.  Maybe it’s the want of a friend that has driven her to this.”

It blighted his spirits for days, and when it had all gone from my mind it was brought back to me by his manner.  But it was not to be our last memory of the lady with the scarlet pelisse, for before the week was out Jim came round to ask me if I would again go up with him.

“My uncle has had a letter,” said he.  “She would speak with me, and I would be easier if you came with me, Rod.”

For me it was only a pleasure outing, but I could see, as we drew near the house, that Jim was troubling in his mind lest we should find that things were amiss.

His fears were soon set at rest, however, for we had scarce clicked the garden gate before the woman was out of the door of the cottage and running down the path to meet us.  She was so strange a figure, with some sort of purple wrapper on, and her big, flushed face smiling out of it, that I might, if I had been alone, have taken to my heels at the sight of her.  Even Jim stopped for a moment as if he were not very sure of himself, but her hearty ways soon set us at our ease.

“It is indeed good of you to come and see an old, lonely woman,” said she, “and I owe you an apology that I should give you a fruitless journey on Tuesday, but in a sense you were yourselves the cause of it, since the thought of your coming had excited me, and any excitement throws me into a nervous fever.  My poor nerves!  You can see for yourselves how they serve me.”

She held out her twitching hands as she spoke.  Then she passed one of them through Jim’s arm, and walked with him up the path.