He was ushered by the most staid, most crisp of parlour-maids, not into Helen's own little sanctum downstairs, but into the drawing-room. It was a narrow room, running to the back of the house where a long window showed a ghostly tree in the fog outside, and it was very much crowded with over-large furniture gathered together from Miss Buchanan's past. There were chintz-covered chairs and sofas that one had to make one's way around, and there were cabinets filled with china, and there were tables with reviews and book-cutters laid out on them. And it was the most cheerful of rooms; three canaries sang loudly in a spacious gilt cage that stood in a window, the tea-table was laid before the fire, and the leaping firelight played on the massive form of the black cat, dozing in his basket, on the gilt of the canaries' cage, on the china in the cabinets, the polished surface of the chintz, and the copper kettle on the tea-table. Franklin stood and looked about him, highly interested. He liked to think that Helen had such a comfortable refuge to fall back upon, though by the time that old Miss Buchanan appeared he had reflected that so much comfort might be just the impediment that had prevented her from taking to her wings as he felt persuaded she could and should do. Old Miss Buchanan interested him even more than her room. She was a firm, ample woman of over sixty, with plentiful grey hair brushed back uncompromisingly from her brow, tight lips, small, attentive eyes with projecting eyebrows over them, and an expression at once of reticence and cordiality. She wore a black dress of an old-fashioned cut, and round her neck was a heavy gold chain and a large gold locket. Helen would be in directly, she said, and expected him. Franklin saw at once that she took him for granted, and that she was probably in the habit of taking all Helen's acquaintances for granted, and of making them comfortable until Helen came and took them off her hands. She had, he inferred, many interests of her own, and did not waste much conjecture on stray callers. Franklin was quite content to count as a stray caller, and he had always conjecture enough for two in any encounter. He talked away in his even, deliberate tones, while they drank tea and ate the hottest of muffins that stood in a covered dish on a brass tripod before the fire, and, while they talked, Miss Buchanan shot rather sharper glances at him from under her eyebrows. 'So you were at Merriston with Helen's Miss Jakes,' she said, placing him. 'It made a match, that party, didn't it? Quite a good thing for Gerald Digby, too, I hear. Miss Jakes is soon to be back, Helen tells me.' 'Next week,' said Franklin. 'And the wedding for November.' 'So I'm told.' 'You've known Miss Jakes for some time?' 'For almost all my life,' said Franklin, with his calm and candid smile. 'Oh, old friends, then. You come from Boston, too, perhaps?'