Down a flight of stone steps, through a low doorway, and into a dark little corridor, was Lesley conducted. She noticed that Mrs. Romaine and Ethel were quite accustomed to the place. "We have often been before, you know," Ethel explained. "It's your father's hobby, you know; his doll's house, or Noah's Ark, or whatever you like to call it--his pet toy. I always call it his Noah's Ark myself. The animals walk in two by two. The men may bring their wives on Sundays. Oh, by the bye, Lesley, I hope you don't mind smoke. The men have their pipes, you know." And then Lesley, dazzled and confounded by her surroundings, found herself in a brilliantly lighted room of considerable size--really two ordinary rooms thrown into one. Immediately the squalor and ugliness of the outer world were thrown into the background. The walls of the room were distempered--Indian red below, warm grey above; and on the grey walls were hung fine photographs of well-known foreign buildings or of celebrated paintings. In one part of the room stood a magnificent billiard-table, now neatly covered with a cloth. A neat little piano was placed at the other end of the room, near a large table covered with a scarlet cloth, strewn with magazines, papers, and books, and decorated with flowers. The chairs were of solid make, seated with red leather ornamented with brass nails. In fact, the whole place was not only comfortable, but cheery and pleasant to the eye. Lesley was told that there was also a library, beside a kitchen and pantry, whence visitors could get tea or coffee, "temperance drinks," and rolls or cakes. A few women in their "Sunday best" were looking at the books and periodicals, or gossiping together, but they were not so numerous as the men--respectable working-men for the most part; some of them smoking, some reading or talking, without their pipes. In one little group Lesley recognized, with a start, that her father was the centre of attraction. He was sitting, as the other men were, and he was talking: the musical notes of his cultivated voice rose clearly above the hum of rougher and huskier voices. Lesley gathered that some proposition had been made which he was combating. "No," he said, "I won't have it. Look here--did you open this club, or did I?" "You did, guv'nor," said one of the men. "Then I'll have my say in the management. Some of you want the women turned out, do you? It's the curse of modern life, the curse of English and all other society, that you do want the women turned out, you men, where-ever you go. And the reason is that women are better than you are. They are purer, nobler, more conscientious than you, and therefore you don't want them with you when you take your pleasures. Eh?" There was a melodious geniality about the last monosyllable which made the men smile in spite of themselves.