“I don’t think that sum’s right at all,” Alva said after a few seconds of furious thought. “That assumes doing the whole rigmarole twice a day—”

“Yes—”

“But with the same pair of shoes. These are extreme examples. Sometimes I wear slippers.”

“The kind you wear to bed?”

She almost laughed but managed to suppress it in time. “No, the kind you wear to go dancing.”

“Ah, and they don’t have laces?”

“No,” she said. “Although I suppose sometimes other shoes worn during the day do.”

“I see,” he said, rummaging inside his jacket and producing a notebook and a stub of pencil. “Now,” he said, “on an average day, how many changes of shoe would you say you go through?”

“Well,” she said, scrunching her brow. “Average is hard, because each day is—Oh, look here, I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense. I really must be going.”

She started to brush past him.

“Wait!”

“Really,” she sighed. “It’s always ‘wait!’ with you.”

“You only say that because you haven’t met my sister,” he said confidingly. “I’m quite the most prompt person in my family. Well, except for Benedict. And maybe my mother. The third most prompt person.”

“Yet again, you simply fascinate me. Good—”

“Wait! That’s the point, you see. I want you to meet my family.”

“I don’t think—”

But he was already gently leading her by her elbow. Alva huffed in exasperation and tried not to focus on the new information his proximity revealed: that he smelled of peppermint and man, that the muscles underneath his coat sleeve were large enough to throw off the cut of the garment, that he’d nicked himself at least three times during his morning shave. At least he had shaved, she reasoned. That, at least, was an improvement over their last meeting.

“Mother, I want you to meet someone,” he said, stopping in front of the rowdy family she’d seen earlier. A short, rounded woman with a chaotic tumble of reddish-brown curls turned around and greeted them with an enormous smile.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Alva replied, unable to keep from smiling back.

“Sam, release this poor girl at once,” she said, her eyes landing on where he had grasped Alva’s elbow. “I don’t think people like to be hauled about.”

“They don’t,” Alva put in, pleased to find an understanding spirit. She yanked her arm away.

“I wasn’t hauling her about,” Sam protested. “I just wanted you to meet her. This is Alva Webster.”

“The woman with the house?” This was from a younger, slimmer version of Sam’s mother, a girl no more than sixteen or seventeen. “With the ghost?”