I knew a barmaid--a nice girl, without the least harm in her. I gave her flowers--a bangle once. For some years she has been the mistress of a flourishing public-house off New Oxford Street; married a barman who had dropped in for a legacy. Doubtless by now she is the mother of an appallingly large family. Yet, whenever I met Orion, he used to snigger, bob his silly face forward, and chuckle: “Well, old man, seen anything of Rosey lately? Fine girl, Rosey!” I should have forgotten the girl’s very name, but Orion would not let me. He always said the same thing. One Christmas Eve I took her to his rooms--it was the only time he ever met her. He was sitting by a tremendous fire cooking a fine turkey. The table was set out most elaborately, with flowers, crackers, serviettes folded into shape. We sat and chatted; he basting the bird, Rosey dimpling about with appetite. He told us how much he had paid for that turkey in Smithfield market, he showed us the sausages that were to be eaten with it. He went to the cupboard and brought out a very dainty tin of fancy biscuits. Rosey half put out her plump hand and then drew it back awkwardly. He lifted the rice paper so that we might admire the sugar on the top row. He pointed out bottles of ginger wine, boxes of preserved fruit--all sorts of things. They made poor Rosey’s blue eyes glisten. But he never offered her so much as a fig. What is more, I ascertained afterward, as a positive fact, that he never had a soul to dine with him that Christmas. That’s the sort of fellow Orion was. He had the third floor set at No. 7. We all wondered why he lived in the Inn at all. It held no advantages for him. His oak was never sported, except when he was out. Perhaps you see nothing so very important, nothing, certainly, that is romantic, about that heavy black door on which my name stands white. But a man’s oak guards faithfully the secrets of his life. Generations of secrets, of sins, of sorrows are held by those stout doors--black and inscrutable, two by two on every landing. The oak shuts out duns; shuts in a pretty woman. The stories those black doors could tell! I wonder they never crack--with laughter or great, splitting sobs. The oak knows everything. It is like a fashionable woman’s toilet. I love to hear them clang to somberly at night; when a man goes out, when he creeps in late. The oak is the bachelor’s discreet parlor-maid. It says “not at home.” When we sport it--which is simply shutting it--we defy the world. Yet Orion only used this potential thing, this sacred and confidential black door, to protect his electro plate. He had no debts, no compromising visitors, no delicate difficulties. What a man! What a mean, drab life!