The boy shied away on that, and again the door was opened six inches. Bennett pushed it open and disappeared into the dark house leaving Frederic confronted with the gaunt personage who owned the haggard face. "Will ye come with me now?" she said. Frederic followed her down a long gloomy passage and into a large dining-room, where at the table, surrounded with papers, sat James Lawrie, cursing, smoking, and writing full tilt. He had a huge cup of strong coffee by his side. His brows were drawn tight over his eyes, and Frederic was most struck by his huge jutting nose. He seemed all nose--a nose and a flying pen. He took no notice of Frederic, but growled: "The figures--give me the figures!" The old servant took up a newspaper and read out a series of figures which, as far as Frederic could make out, related to the price of cotton. Lawrie took them down as she read, added a few words after them, gathered and folded his sheets, thrust them into a dirty inky envelope and held them out to the old woman. "I'll be late if I don't take a cab," she said. Lawrie fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a florin. She took it and shuffled away. Lawrie gulped down the remainder of his coffee, took up a battered green book and said: "Now we'll have some poetry." And he read half a canto of Spenser's "Faërie Queene" in a big rumbling voice, mouthing the archaic words. Frederic could make little sense of it and sat taking in the room, the heavy mahogany sideboard, the horsehair chairs by the fireplace, the Biblical prints on the walls, the books on either side of the window, and through the window the dismal walled garden with its starved hawthorn trees and the cats playing about on the wall. The windows were closed and the air in the room was thick and smelled of tobacco and food and clothes. It was a dingy dusty room, made more than ever forbidding by a reproduction of Munkaczy's _Christ before Pilate_, which hung over the mantelpiece between the _Crucifixion_ of Rubens and a photograph of a little Scotch church and a manse with gloomy hills in the background. When the reading was finished Frederic said: "I'm sorry I interrupted you."