He was a tall, evil-looking man, in blue-striped apron, with a lean, scraped face as purple as one of his own joints of meat that had lain a little too long in the window. So fascinated were Dorothy’s eyes by that ominous figure that she did not look where she was going, and bumped into a very large, stout man who was stepping off the pavement backwards.

The stout man turned round. “Good Heavens! It’s Dorothy!” he exclaimed.

“Why, Mr. Warburton! How extraordinary! Do you know, I had a feeling I was going to meet you today.”

“By the pricking of your thumbs, I presume?” said Mr. Warburton, beaming all over a large, pink, Micawberish face. “And how are you? But by Jove!” he added, “What need is there to ask? You look more bewitching than ever.”

He pinched Dorothy’s bare elbow—she had changed, after breakfast, into a sleeveless gingham frock. Dorothy stepped hurriedly backwards to get out of his reach—she hated being pinched or otherwise “mauled about”—and said rather severely:

“Please don’t pinch my elbow. I don’t like it.”

“My dear Dorothy, who could resist an elbow like yours? It’s the sort of elbow one pinches automatically. A reflex action, if you understand me.”

“When did you get back to Knype Hill?” said Dorothy, who had put her bicycle between Mr. Warburton and herself. It’s over two months since I’ve seen you.”

“I got back the day before yesterday. But this is only a flying visit. I’m off again tomorrow. I’m taking the kids to Brittany. The bastards, you know.”

Mr. Warburton pronounced the word bastards, at which Dorothy looked away in discomfort, with a touch of naive pride. He and his “bastards” (he had three of them) were one of the chief scandals of Knype Hill. He was a man of independent income, calling himself a painter—he produced about half a dozen mediocre landscapes every year—and he had come to Knype Hill two years earlier and bought one of the new villas behind the Rectory. There he lived, or rather stayed periodically, in open concubinage with a woman whom he called his housekeeper. Four months ago this woman—she was a foreigner, a Spaniard it was said—had created a fresh and worse scandal by abruptly deserting him, and his three children were now parked with some long-suffering relative in London. In appearance he was a fine, imposing-looking man, though entirely bald (he was at great pains to conceal this), and he carried himself with such a rakish air as to give the impression that his fairly sizeable belly was merely a kind of annexe to his chest. His age was forty-eight, and he owned to forty-four. People in the town said that he was a “proper old rascal”; young girls were afraid of him, not without reason.

Mr. Warburton had laid his hand pseudo-paternally on Dorothy’s shoulder and was shepherding her through the crowd, talking all the while almost without a pause. The Blifil-Gordon car, having rounded the pump, was now wending its way back, still accompanied by its troupe of middle-aged Bacchantes. Mr. Warburton, his attention caught, paused to scrutinize it.

“What is the meaning of these disgusting antics?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re—what is it they call it?—electioneering. Trying to get us to vote for them, I suppose.”

“Trying to get us to vote for them! Good God!” murmured Mr. Warburton, as he eyed the triumphal cortege. He raised the large, silver-headed cane that he always carried, and pointed, rather expressively, first at one figure in the procession and then at another.