if Erica had not been such a zealous little Republican?" said
Raeburn, smiling.

"Why, father, the very greenhouse will belong to you; and such a nice
piece of garden! Oh, when can we go and see it, and choose a nice room
for your study?"

"I will see Mr. Woodward's executor tomorrow morning," said Raeburn.
"The sooner we move in the better for there are rocks ahead."

"The 'we' refers only to you and Erica," said Aunt Jean, who had joined
them. "Tom and I shall of course stay on here."

"Oh, no, auntie!" cried Erica in such genuine dismay that Aunt Jean was
touched.

"I don't want you to feel at all bound to have us," she said. "Now that
the worst of the poverty is over, there is no necessity for clubbing
together."

"And after you have shared all the discomforts with us, you think we
should go off in such a dog-in-the-mangerish way as that!" cried Erica.
"Besides, it really was chiefly owing to Tom, who was the one to get
hurt into the bargain. If you won't come, I shall--" she paused to
think of a threat terrible enough, "I shall think again about living
with the Fane-Smiths."

This led the conversation back to Greyshot, and they lingered so long
round the fire talking that Raeburn was for once unpunctual, and kept an
audience at least ten minutes waiting for him.

No. 16 Guilford Square proved to be much better inside than a casual
passer in the street would have imagined. Outside, it was certainly a
grim-looking house, but within it was roomy and comfortable. The lower
rooms were wainscoted in a sort of yellowish-brown color, the upper
wainscoted in olive-green. There was no such thing as a wall paper in
the whole house, and indeed it was hard to imagine, when once inside it,
that you were in nineteenth-century London at all.

Raeburn, going over it with Erica the following evening, was a little
amused to think of himself domiciled in such an old-world house. Mr.
Woodward's housekeeper, who was still taking care of the place,
assured them that one of the leaden pipes outside bore the date of the
seventeenth century, though the two last figures were so illegible that
they might very possibly have stood for 1699.

Erica was delighted with it all, and went on private voyages of
discovery, while her father talked to the housekeeper, taking stock of
the furniture, imagining how she would rearrange the rooms, and planning
many purchases to be made with her three hundred pounds. She was singing
to herself for