there
they stuck in death to pay me out. It was not necessary to pin any
notice to the walls; one merely laid them on the varnish; and that
morning, when young Delavoye had leant against it in his whites, he had
to peel himself off like a plaster. That morning! It seemed days ago,
not because I had met with any great adventure yet, but the whole
atmosphere of the place was changed by the discovery of a kindred
spirit. Not that we were naturally akin in temperament, tastes, or
anything else but our common youth and the want in each of a companion
approaching his own type. We saw things at a different angle, and when
he smiled I often wondered why. We might have met in town or at college
and never sought each other again; but separate adversities had driven
us both into the same dull haven--one from the Egyptian Civil, which had
nearly been the death of him; the other on a sanguine voyage (before the
mast) from the best school in Scotland to Land Agency. We were bound to
make the most of each other, and I for one looked forward to renewing
our acquaintance even more than to the sequel of our interrupted
adventure.

But I was by no means anxious to meet my new friend's womankind; never
anything of a lady's man, I was inclined rather to resent the existence
of these good ladies, partly from something he had said about them with
reference to our impending enterprise. Consequently it was rather late
in the evening when I turned out of one of the nominally empty houses,
where I had gone to lodge with a still humbler servant of the Estate,
and went down to No. 7 with some hope that its mistress at all events
might already have retired. Almost to my horror I learned that they were
all three in the back garden, whither I was again conducted through the
little dining-room with the massive furniture.

Mrs. Delavoye was a fragile woman with a kind but nervous manner; the
daughter put me more at my ease, but I could scarcely see either of them
by the dim light from the French window outside which they sat. I was
more eager, however, to see "the pit's mouth," and in the soft starlight
of a velvet night I made out the two Dutch chairs lying face downward
over the shaft.

"It's so tiresome of my brother," said Miss Delavoye, following my
glance with disconcerting celerity: "just when we want our garden
chairs he's varnished them, and there they lie unfit to use!"

I never had any difficulty in looking stolid, but for the moment I