“Now, dears,” she said, with a smile of welcome that was fascinating from its absolute genuineness, “I shall be truly hurt if you fail to do justice to our simple repast”—and she sat down with an air of old-fashioned stateliness as if she were heading a banquet table. “Sit down, dears. Robert, you must have Florence on your right hand.” The Hibberts took their places merrily, their spirits reviving now that they were no longer alone with their host. Aunt Anne, too, looked so picturesque sitting there in the little summer-like room, with the garden beyond, that they could not help being glad they had come. They felt that they were living a distinct day in their lives, and not one that afterwards in looking back they would find difficult to sort out from a hundred others like it. Even Mr. Baines grew less grumpy, and offered presently to show them the garden. “And the plum-trees and the pear-trees,” said Aunt Anne; “and the view from the summer-house in the corner.” “Oh yes,” her husband said, “we’ll show them all;” and he helped to do the honours of the table with what he evidently intended to be genial courtesy. “It does my heart good to see you, dears,” Aunt Anne said, as she insisted on helping them to an enormous quantity of stewed cranberries. “And it does us good to be here,” they answered, forgetting all their vexation at losing a day by the sea; forgetting even the poor chicken that was being roasted in vain, and the waiting fly to be paid for at so much an hour. “Walter dear,” Mrs. Hibbert said, as they drove back to Brighton, carefully balancing on their knees four large pots of jam, while they also kept an eye on an enormous nosegay badly tied up, that wobbled about on the back seat, “Mr. Baines didn’t seem to know you when we arrived.” “He had never set eyes on me before. Aunt Anne only set eyes on him five years ago. He was rather a grumpy beggar. I wonder who the deuce he was? We none of us ever knew.” “He didn’t know you were a journalist, I think.” “No, I suppose not. I wonder if he ever did anything for a living himself?” Then, as if he repented saying anything that sounded unkind of a man whose salt he had just eaten, he added, “But you can never tell what people are from their talk the first time you see them. He is not unlike a man I knew some years ago, who was a great inventive genius. He used to shuffle about in shoes too big for him, just as this beggar did.” “I felt quite frightened when he first came round the corner.”