Having made this reflection, Mrs. Naldret thinks of her husband again, and wonders what makes him so late to-night. But in a few moments she hears a stamping in the passage. 'That's Jim,' she thinks, with a light in her eyes. A rough comely man; with no hair on his face but a bit of English whisker of a light sandy colour in keeping with his skin, which is of a light sandy colour also. Head well shaped, slightly bald, especially on one side, where the hair has been worn away by the friction of his two-foot rule. When Jim Naldret makes a purse of his lips, and rubs the side of his head with his rule, his mates know that he is in earnest. And he is very often in earnest.
'It's mortal cold, mother,' he says almost before he enters.
'There's a nice fire, father,' replies Mrs. Naldret cheerfully; 'that'll soon warm you.'
'I don't know about that,' he returns, with the handle of the door in his hand. 'Now look here,--_did_ you ever see such a door as this? Opens bang into the passage.'
'You're always grumbling about the door, father.'
'Well, if I like it, it doesn't do any one any harm, does it? The architect was a born fool, that's what he was.'
To support his assertion that the architect was a born fool, Jim Naldret thinks it necessary to make a martyr of himself; so he stands in the draught, and shivers demonstratively as the cold wind blows upon him.
'Never mind the door, Jim,' says Mrs. Naldret coaxingly. 'Come and wash your hands.'
'But I shall mind the door!' exclaims Jim Naldret, who is endowed with a large organ of combativeness, and never can be induced to shirk an argument. 'The architect he made this door for warm weather. Then it's all very well. But in this weather, it's a mistake, that's what it is. Directly you open it, comes a blast cold enough to freeze one. I ain't swearing, mother, because I say blast.'
This small pleasantry restores his equanimity, and he repeats it with approving nods; but it produces little effect upon his wife, who says,
'_Will_ you wash your hands and face, father, instead of maudlin?'
'All right, all right, mother! Bring the basin in here, and I'll soon sluice myself.'
Mrs. Naldret, going to their bedroom, which is at the back of the parlour, to get the soap and water, calls out softly from that sanctuary,