’Well, it might have been three, or it might have been half past, anyhow it was thereabouts, when up there comes two men and a woman, which one of the men was that young man what’s a friend of yours.  “Oh,” I says to myself, “here’s something new in callers, I wonder what it is they’re wanting.”  That young man what was a friend of yours, he starts hammering, and hammering, as the custom was with every one who came, and, as usual, no more notice was taken of him than nothing,—­though I knew that all the time the Arab party was indoors.’

At this point I felt that at all hazards I must interpose a question.

‘You are sure he was indoors?’

She took it better than I feared she might.

’Of course I’m sure,—­hadn’t I seen him come in at seven, and he never hadn’t gone out since, for I don’t believe that I’d taken my eyes off the place not for two minutes together, and I’d never had a sight of him.  If he wasn’t indoors, where was he then?’

For the moment, so far as I was concerned, the query was unanswerable.  She triumphantly continued: 

’Instead of doing what most did, when they’d had enough of hammering, and going away, these three they went round to the back, and I’m blessed if they mustn’t have got through the kitchen window, woman and all, for all of a sudden the blind in the front room was pulled not up, but down—­dragged down it was, and there was that young man what’s a friend of yours standing with it in his hand.

’"Well,” I says to myself, “if that ain’t cool I should like to know what is.  If, when you ain’t let in, you can let yourself in, and that without so much as saying by your leave, or with your leave, things is coming to a pretty pass.  Wherever can that Arab party be, and whatever can he be thinking of, to let them go on like that because that he’s the sort to allow a liberty to be took with him, and say nothing, I don’t believe.”

’Every moment I expects to hear a noise and see a row begin, but, so far as I could make out, all was quiet and there wasn’t nothing of the kind.  So I says to myself, “There’s more in this than meets the eye, and them three parties must have right upon their side, or they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing in the way they are, there’d be a shindy.”

’Presently, in about five minutes, the front door opens, and a young man—­not the one what’s your friend, but the other—­comes sailing out, and through the gate, and down the road, as stiff and upright as a grenadier,—­I never see anyone walk more upright, and few as fast.  At his heels comes the young man what is your friend, and it seems to me that he couldn’t make out what this other was a-doing of.  I says to myself, “There’s been a quarrel between them two, and him as has gone has hooked it.”  This young man what is your friend he stood at the gate, all of a fidget, staring after the other with all his eyes, as if he couldn’t think what to make of him, and the young woman, she stood on the doorstep, staring after him too.