ome distraction from his own thoughts, and there seemed no reason why
he should not chat to the kindly portly lady in charge.

"No visitors here, sir. We don't have much company. Just a gentleman
now and then, as may be yourself."

She pulled a light pair of steps to the window and mounted them
cautiously one step at a time, dragging a long Holland curtain in her
hand.

"Do you want to hang that up?" asked Christopher, watching her with
idle interest. "Do let me do it, Mrs. Eliot, you'll fall off those
steps if you go higher. I can't promise to catch you, but I can
promise to hang curtains much better than you can." Mrs. Eliot, who
was already panting with exertion and the fatigue of stretching up her
ample figure to unaccustomed heights, looked down at him doubtfully.

"Whatever would Mr. Masters say, sir?"

"He would be quite pleased his visitor found so harmless an amusement.
You come down, Mrs. Eliot. Curtain-hanging is a passion with me, but
what a shame to cover up those pretty curtains with dingy Holland!"

"They wouldn't be pretty curtains now, sir," said Mrs. Eliot,
descending with elaborate care, "if they hadn't been covered up these
twenty years and more."

"What a waste," ejaculated Christopher now on the steps, "isn't the
room ever used?"

"Never since Mrs. Masters went out of it. 'Eliot,' says the master--I
was first housemaid then--'keep Mrs. Masters' rooms just as they are,
ready for use. She will want them again some day.' So I did."

Christopher shifted the steps and hung another curtain.

"I didn't know there had been a Mrs. Masters."

"Most folk have forgotten it, I think, sir."

"This was her boudoir, I suppose."

"Yes. And I think he's never been in here since she went, but once,
and that was five years after. The boudoir bell rang and I came, all
of a tremble, to hear it for the first time after so long. He was
standing as it may be there. 'That cushion's faded, Eliot,' he said,
'get another made like it. You are to replace everything that gets
torn or faded or worn without troubling me. Keep the rooms just as
they are.' He had a pile of photographs in his hand and a little
picture, and he locked them up in that cabinet, and I don't suppose
it's been opened since. He never made any fuss about it from the
first. No, nor altered his ways either." She drew a cover over a chair
and tied the strings viciously. "It's for all the world as if he'd
never had a wife at all."

Christopher h