Tillytuck stood and looked at the three wimmen critters out of twinkling little black eyes almost buried in cushions of fat.

“How pleased ye look to see me!” he said. “Only sorter paralyzed as it were. Well, I can’t help being good-looking.”

He went into what seemed an internal convulsion of silent chuckles. Pat jerked herself out of her trance. Mother had gone upstairs…somebody must do…say…something. Judy, probably for the first time in her life, seemed incapable of speech or movement.

Pat scrambled up from the rug and went forward.

“Mr.…Mr. Tillytuck, is it?”

“The same, at your service…Christian name, Josiah,” said the newcomer, with a bow that might have been courtly if he had had any neck to speak of. It was not till afterwards that Pat thought what a nice voice he had. “Age, fifty-five…in politics, Liberal…religion, fundamentalist…gentleman-at-large, symbolically speaking. And an Orangeman,” he added, looking at a large picture of King William on a white horse, crossing the Boyne, that hung upon the wall.

“Won’t you…take off your coat…and sit down?” said Pat rather stupidly. “You see…we didn’t expect you tonight. Father told us you would be here tomorrow.”

“I got a chance up on a truck to Silverbridge so I thought I’d better take it,” rumbled Mr. Tillytuck. He hung his cap up on a nail, revealing a head thatched with thick pepper-and-salt curls. He took off his scarf and coat and the cause of a mysterious bulge at one side was explained…a huge, stuffed, white Arctic owl which he proudly set up on the clock shelf. He put his bag in one corner with his fiddle on top of it. Then, with unerring discrimination, he selected the most comfortable chair in the kitchen…Great-grandfather Nehemiah Gardiner’s old glossy wooden arm-chair with its red cushions…sank into it and produced a stubby black pipe from his pocket.

“Any objections?” he rumbled. “I never smoke if ladies object.”

“We don’t,” said Pat. “We’re used to Uncle Tom smoking.”

Mr. Tillytuck deliberately loaded and lighted his pipe. Ten minutes before no one in the room had ever seen him. And now he seemed to belong there…to have been always there. It was impossible to think of him as a stranger or a change. Even Judy, who, as a rule, didn’t care what any man thought of her clothes, was thanking her stars that she had on her new drugget dress and a white apron. McGinty had sniffed once at him approvingly and then gone to sleep again, ignoring the new dog entirely. The two gray cats went on purring. Only Gentleman Tom hadn’t yet made up his mind and continued to stare at him suspiciously.