ew where or why. Even Mrs.
Leadbatter, whose experience of life was wider than Mary Ann's,
considered his vagaries almost unchristian, though to the highest degree
gentlemanly. Sometimes, too, he sported the swallow-tail and the
starched breast-plate, which was a wonder to Mary Ann, who knew that
waiters were connected only with the most stylish establishments.
Baker's Terrace did not wear evening dress.

Mary Ann liked him best in black and white. She thought he looked like
the pictures in the young ladies' novelettes, which sometimes caught her
eye as she passed newsvendors' shops on errands. Not that she was read
in this literature--she had no time for reading. But, even when clothed
in rough tweeds, Lancelot had for Mary Ann an aristocratic halo; in his
dressing-gown he savoured of the grand Turk. His hands were masterful:
the fingers tapering, the nails pedantically polished. He had fair hair,
with moustache to match; his brow was high and white, and his grey eyes
could flash fire. When he drew himself up to his full height, he
threatened the gas globes. Never had No. 5 Baker's Terrace boasted of
such a tenant. Altogether, Lancelot loomed large to Mary Ann; she
dazzled him with his own boots in humble response, and went about sad
after a reprimand for putting his papers in order. Her whole theory of
life oscillated in the presence of a being whose views could so run
counter to her strongest instincts. And yet, though the universe seemed
tumbling about her ears when he told her she must not move a scrap of
manuscript, howsoever wildly it lay about the floor or under the bed, she
did not for a moment question his sanity. She obeyed him like a dog;
uncomprehending, but trustful. But, after all, this was only of a piece
with the rest of her life. There was nothing she questioned. Life stood
at her bedside every morning in the cold dawn, bearing a day heaped high
with duties; and she jumped cheerfully out of her warm bed and took them
up one by one, without question or murmur. They _were_ life. Life had
no other meaning any more than it has for the omnibus hack, which cannot
conceive existence outside shafts, and devoid of the intermittent flick
of a whip point. The comparison is somewhat unjust; for Mary Ann did not
fare nearly so well as the omnibus hack, having to make her meals off
such scraps as even the lodgers sent back. Mrs. Leadbatter was extremely
economical, as much so with the provisions i