And if you got an
order to view, you got an order to view."

"If you think I might."

The lady stood up in the car, a tall and graceful figure of doubt and
desire and glossy black fur. "I'm sure it looks a very charming house."

"It's _clean_," said the little old woman, "from top to toe. Look as you
may."

"I'm sure it is," said the tall lady, and put aside her great fur coat
from her lithe, slender, red-clad body. (She was permitted by a sudden
civility of Clarence's to descend.) "Why! the windows," she said,
pausing on the step, "are like crystal."

"These very 'ands," said the little old woman, and glanced up at the
windows the lady had praised. The little old woman's initial sternness
wrinkled and softened as the skin of a windfall does after a day or so
upon the ground. She half turned in the doorway and made a sudden
vergerlike gesture. "We enter," she said, "by the 'all.... Them's Mr.
Brumley's 'ats and sticks. Every 'at or cap 'as a stick, and every stick
'as a 'at _or_ cap, and on the 'all table is the gloves corresponding.
On the right is the door leading to the kitching, on the left is the
large droring-room which Mr. Brumley 'as took as 'is study." Her voice
fell to lowlier things. "The other door beyond is a small lavatory
'aving a basing for washing 'ands."

"It's a perfectly delightful hall," said the lady. "So low and
wide-looking. And everything so bright--and lovely. Those long, Italian
pictures! And how charming that broad outlook upon the garden beyond!"

"You'll think it charminger when you see the garding," said the little
old woman. "It was Mrs. Brumley's especial delight. Much of it--with 'er
own 'ands."

"We now enter the droring-room," she proceeded, and flinging open the
door to the right was received with an indistinct cry suggestive of the
words, "Oh, _damn_ it!" The stout medium-sized gentleman in an artistic
green-grey Norfolk suit, from whom the cry proceeded, was kneeling on
the floor close to the wide-open window, and he was engaged in lacing up
a boot. He had a round, ruddy, rather handsome, amiable face with a sort
of bang of brown hair coming over one temple, and a large silk bow under
his chin and a little towards one ear, such as artists and artistic men
of letters affect. His profile was regular and fine, his eyes
expressive, his mouth, a very passable mouth. His features expressed at
first only the naive horror of a shy man unveiled.

Intelligent appreciation superven