St. John’s Wood proper is perhaps one of the most delightful suburban retreats in which the man can make a pleasant temple for his _lares_ and _penates_, who, yearning for the waving of green trees about his abode, is yet obliged to live within an easy cab-drive from the City. Dear little villas, embosomed in foliage; stately mansions, towering proudly out of half an acre of trimly-kept garden, invite the wealthy citizen to retirement and repose. The young lilacs and laburnums of to-day may represent but poorly the bosky verdures of the past, but still the Wood of St. John is a cool and pleasant oasis in the great arid desert of London. But there are outskirts and dependencies of St. John that are not quite so pleasant,--ragged wastes and shabby little terraces, that hang like tattered edges disgracing a costly garment. These dismal streets and dreary terraces may not belong of right to St. John, but they hang about him, and cling to him, and shelter themselves under the grandeur of his name, nevertheless. Woolcote Villas, St. John’s Wood, were very pretentious little dwelling-places, fronted with damp stucco, and with a tendency to a mossy greenness of aspect that was eminently dispiriting. Woolcote Villas were of the Elizabethan order of architecture, and went off abruptly into peaks and angles wherever a peak or an angle was possible. How such small houses could require the massive stacks of Elizabethan chimneys which made Woolcote Villas appear top-heavy and incongruous to the eye of the stranger, was an enigma only to be solved by the architect who designed those habitations; and why Woolcote Villas should each be finished off with a stuccoed mustard-pot, popularly known as a campanello tower, which was not Elizabethan, and not practicable for habitation, being open to the four winds of heaven, was another problem perpetually awaiting the same individual’s solution. The hansom cabman, after driving through all the intricacies of St. John’s Wood on different false scents, came at last upon Woolcote Villas, through the friendly offices of a milkman, and pulled up his horse before the door of No. 7. Francis alighted and rang a bell,--a bell with a slack wire, which required to be pulled a great many times before any effect was produced. At last, however, the bell rang; and then, after a pause and another peal, the door was opened, and a slipshod servant-maid, with a flapping circle of dirty net hanging from the back of her disorderly head, emerged from No. 7, Woolcote Villas, and presented herself at the little gate before which Francis Tredethlyn was waiting. The young man asked if Mrs. Banks was at home. Yes, she was at home, and Miss Banks also. Did he please to want the apartments?