ar.

Not visited by the surviving members of her family, living, literally,
by herself in the world, Hester decided, in spite of her comfortable
little income, on letting lodgings. The explanation of this strange
conduct which she had written on her slate, in reply to an inquiry from
Anne, was the true one. "I have not got a friend in the world: I dare
not live alone." In that desolate situation, and with that melancholy
motive, she put the house into an agent's hands. The first person in
want of lodgings whom the agent sent to see the place was Perry the
trainer; and Hester's first tenant was Geoffrey Delamayn.

The rooms which the landlady reserved for herself were the kitchen, the
room next to it, which had once been her brother's "study," and the
two small back bedrooms up stairs--one for herself, the other for the
servant-girl whom she employed to help her. The whole of the rest of
the cottage was to let. It was more than the trainer wanted; but Hester
Dethridge refused to dispose of her lodgings--either as to the rooms
occupied, or as to the period for which they were to be taken--on other
than her own terms. Perry had no alternative but to lose the advantage
of the garden as a private training-ground, or to submit.

Being only two in number, the lodgers had three bedrooms to choose from.
Geoffrey established himself in the back-room, over the drawing-room.
Perry chose the front-room, placed on the other side of the cottage,
next to the two smaller apartments occupied by Hester and her maid.
Under this arrangement, the front bedroom, on the opposite side of the
passage--next to the room in which Geoffrey slept--was left empty, and
was called, for the time being, the spare room. As for the lower floor,
the athlete and his trainer ate their meals in the dining-room; and left
the drawing-room, as a needless luxury, to take care of itself.

The Foot-Race once over, Perry's business at the cottage was at an end.
His empty bedroom became a second spare room. The term for which the
lodgings had been taken was then still unexpired. On the day after the
race Geoffrey had to choose between sacrificing the money, or remaining
in the lodgings by himself, with two spare bedrooms on his hands, and
with a drawing-room for the reception of his visitors--who called with
pipes in their mouths, and whose idea of hospitality was a pot of beer
in the garden.

To use his own phrase, he was "out of sorts." A sluggish reluctance to