We felt rather better when we had had a good splash in the brick-paved back kitchen that Miss Sandal calls the bath-room. And Alice made a fire and boiled a kettle and we had some tea and eggs. Then we looked at the clock and it was half-past five. So we hastened to get into another part of the house before Mrs. Beale came. "I wish we'd tried to live the higher life some less beastly way," said Dicky as we went along the passage. "Living the higher life always hurts at the beginning," Alice said. "I expect it's like new boots, only when you've got used to it you're glad you bore it at first. Let's listen at the doors till we find out where he isn't sleeping." So we listened at all the bedroom doors, but not a snore was heard. "Perhaps he was a burglar," said H.O., "and only pretended to want lodgings so as to get in and bone all the valuables." "There aren't any valuables," said Noel, and this was quite true, for Miss Sandal had no silver or jewellery except a brooch of pewter, and the very teaspoons were of wood--very hard to keep clean and having to be scraped. "Perhaps he sleeps without snoring," said Oswald, "some people do." "Not old gentlemen," said Noel; "think of our Indian uncle--H.O. used to think it was bears at first." "Perhaps he rises with the lark," said Alice, "and is wondering why brekker isn't ready." So then we listened at the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft whistle the tune of the "Would I were a bird" song. So then we went into the dining-room to sit down. But when we opened the door we almost fell in a heap on the matting, and no one had breath for a word--not even for "Krikey," which was what we all thought. I have read of people who could not believe their eyes; and I have always thought it such rot of them, but now, as the author gazed on the scene, he really could not be quite sure that he was not in a dream, and that the gentleman and the night in the Mill weren't dreams too. "Pull back the curtains," Alice said, and we did. I wish I could make the reader feel as astonished as we did. The last time we had seen the room the walls had been bare and white. Now they were covered with the most splendid drawings you can think of, all done in coloured chalk--I don't mean mixed up, like we do with our chalks--but one picture was done in green, and another in brown, and another in red, and so on. And the chalk must have been of some fat radiant kind quite unknown to us, for some of the lines were over an inch thick. "How perfectly _lovely_!" Alice said; "he must have sat up all night to do it. He _is_ good. I expect he's trying to live the higher life, too--just going about doing secretly, and spending his time making other people's houses pretty."