"Oh, thank you," I said, "pray don't let us put you to any trouble. If we may just stand under your porch a moment--" He stood a little aside, waving us politely into the hall behind him. "Dr. Lorrimore would be very angry with me if I allowed a lady and gentleman to stand in his door and did not invite them into his house," he said, in the same even, mellifluous tones. "Please to enter." "Oh, is this Dr. Lorrimore's?" I said. "Thank you--we'll come in. Is Dr. Lorrimore at home?" "Presently," he answered. "He is in the village." He closed the door as we entered, passed us with a bow, preceded us along the hall, and threw open the door of a room which looked out on a trim garden at the rear of the house. Still smiling and bland he invited us to be seated, and then, with another bow, left the room, apparently walking on velvet. Miss Raven and I glanced at each other. "So Dr. Lorrimore has a Chinese man servant?" she said. "How--picturesque!" "Um!" I muttered. She gave me a questioning, half-amused glance, and dropped her voice. "Don't you like--Easterns?" she whispered. "I like 'em in the East," I replied. "In Northumberland they don't--shall we say they don't fit in with the landscape." "I think he fits in--here," she retorted, looking round. "This is a bit Oriental." She was right in that. The room into which we had been ushered was certainly suggestive of what one had heard of India. There were fine Indian rugs on the floor; ivories and brasses in the cabinets; the curtains were of fabric that could only have come out of some Eastern bazaar; there was a faint, curious scent of sandal-wood and of dried rose-leaves. And on the mantelpiece, where, in English households, a marble clock generally stands, reposed a peculiarly ugly Hindu god, cross-legged, hideous of form, whose baleful eyes seemed to follow all our movements. "Yes," I admitted, reflectively. "I think he fits in--here. Dr. Lorrimore said he had been in India for some years, didn't he? He appears to have brought some of it home with him." "I suppose this is his drawing-room," said Miss Raven. "Now, if only it looked out on palm-trees, and--and all other things that one associates with India." "Just so," said I. "What it does look out on, however, is a typical English garden on which, at present, about a ton of rain is descending. And we are nearly three miles from Ravensdene Court!" "Oh, but it won't keep on like that, for long," she said. "And I suppose, if it does, that we can get some sort of a conveyance--perhaps, Dr. Lorrimore has a brougham that he'd lend us." "I don't think that's very likely," said I. "The country practitioner, I think, is more dependent on a bicycle than on a brougham. But here is Dr. Lorrimore." I had just caught sight of him as he entered his garden by a door set in its ivy-covered wall. He ran hastily up the path to the house--within a minute or two, divested of his mackintosh, he opened the door of our room.