HARRY. By a stair, containing some romantic rat-holes. Snakes, whether it’s the room or not, it strikes cold; there is something shiversome about it. (_For the first time she gives him a sharp glance._) I’ve shivered in many a shanty in Australy, and thought of the big room at home and the warmth of it. The warmth! And now this is the best it can do for the prodigal when he returns to it expecting to see that calf done to a turn. We live and learn, missis. MRS. OTERY. We live, at any rate. HARRY. Well said, my cabbage. MRS. OTERY. Thank you, my rhododendron. HARRY (_cheered_). I like your spirit. You and me would get on great if I had time to devote to your amusement. But, see here, I can make sure whether this was the drawing-room. If it was, there is an apple-tree outside there, with one of its branches scraping on the window. I ought to know, for it was out at the window down that apple-tree to the ground that I slided one dark night when I was a twelve-year-old, ran away from home, the naughty blue-eyed angel that I was, and set off to make my fortune on the blasted ocean. The fortune, my--my lady friend--has still got the start of me, but the apple-tree should be there to welcome her darling boy. (_He pulls down the sacking, which lets a little more light into the room. We see that the window, which reaches to the floor, opens outwards. There were probably long ago steps from it down into the garden, but they are gone now, and gone too is the apple-tree._) I’ve won! No tree: no drawing-room. MRS. OTERY. I have heard tell there was once a tree there; and you can see the root if you look down. HARRY. Yes, yes, I see it in the long grass, and a bit of the seat that used to be round it. This is the drawing-room right enough, Harry, my boy. There were blue curtains to that window, and I used to hide behind them and pounce out upon Robinson Crusoe. There was a sofa at this end, and I had my first lessons in swimming on it. You are a fortunate woman, my petite, to be here drinking in these moving memories. There used to be a peacock, too. Now, what the hell could a peacock be doing in this noble apartment? MRS. OTERY. I have been told a cloth used to hang on the wall here, tapestries they’re called, and that it had pictures of peacocks on it. I dare say that was your peacock. HARRY. Gone, even my peacock! And I could have sworn I used to pull the feathers out of its tail. The clock was in this corner, and it had a wheezy little figure of a smith that used to come out and strike the hour on an anvil. My old man used to wind that clock up every night, and I mind his rage when he found out it was an eight-day clock. The padre had to reprove him for swearing. Padre? What’s the English for padre? Damme, I’m forgetting my own language. Oh yes, parson. Is _he_ in the land of the living still? I can see him clear, a long thin man with a hard sharp face. He was always quarrelling about pictures he collected.