Joy and bustle reigned supreme in the corner house of Salamander Street, Vepery. Even its shabby exterior, with patches of chunam peeling off, disclosing its flimsy walls of lath and mud, was sharing in the dawn of coming prosperity. For had not its tenant, Mrs. Baltus, received a letter from Mrs. Matilda Rouat, her well-to-do widowed sister-in-law in Calcutta, announcing that she was desirous of paying her a lengthened visit as a paying guest? The impulse which prompted the decision was an unselfish one in the main. Rumours had lately reached Mrs. Rouat that her sister-in-law was in straitened circumstances. Being a shrewd and not unkindly soul, she decided that she might lighten the domestic burden and at the same time break the monotony of her days in Chandrychoke, the Eurasian quarter of the city where she had lived all her life. Mrs. Rouat had even been thoughtful enough to forward "an advance"--without which important adjunct it is well nigh impossible to set the wheels of labour moving among Eastern artizans. A basket-work mender squatted in the verandah splicing the dilapidated bamboo chairs which formed the principal furniture of the bungalow rooms. Another was deftly patching the rattan-matting on the floors in case Aunt Tilly's ponderous form should be laid prone by reason of its many dangerous slits. The butler, a newly enlisted functionary--having been dismissed from higher service owing to the discovery of clumsy pilfering--was flying about in a crumpled tunic, a relic of better days, his turban all awry, trying to impress "missus" with his zeal in her service. On the little gravel sweep with its border of burnt-up grass, stood a miscellaneous collection of furniture, almirahs, cots, washstands, all receiving, at the hands of a scantily clad coolie, a coat of liquid which he called "Frenchee polishee," but which was really a cheap decoction that, in spite of the strong sun-rays, would retain its stickiness till it proved the object of much vituperation to all whose fingers came in contact with it. Mrs. Baltus, however, was charmed with its rejuvenating effect on her ancient furniture, and stepped about briskly trying to get her money's worth out of the various workers, while her daughter Leila sat darning rents in the muslin curtains, and pondering as to what were her most pressing needs and desires when she got Aunt Tilly to open her purse at the drapery counter of Messrs. Oakes & Co.