Mrs. Murdoch came in with tea which he drank while she stood over him admiringly. “Do you think you’ll be staying long?” she inquired. Michael asked if she wanted the rooms for anyone else. “No. No. I’m really very glad to let them. You’ll find it nice and quiet here. There’s only Miss Carlyle, who’s in the profession and comes in sometimes a little late. Mr. Murdoch is a chemist. But of course he hasn’t got his own shop now.” She paused, and seemed to expect Michael would comment on Mr. Murdoch’s loss of independence; so he said, “Of course not,” nodding wisely. “There was a bit of trouble through his being too kind-hearted to a servant-girl,” said Mrs. Murdoch, looking quickly at the door and shaking her curl-papers. “Yes. Though I don’t know why I’m telling you straight off as you might say. But there, I’m funny sometimes. If I take to anybody, there’s nothing I won’t do for them. Alf—that _is_ my old man—he gets quite aggravated with me over it. So if you happen to get into conversation with him, you’d better not let on you know he used to have a shop of his own.” Michael, wondering how far off were these foreshadowed intimacies with his landlord, promised he would be very discreet, and asked where Mr. Murdoch was working now. “In a chemist’s shop. Just off of the Euston Road. You know,” she said, beaming archly. “It’s what you might call rather a funny place. Only he gets good money, because the boss knows he can trust him.” Michael nodded his head in solemn comprehension of Mr. Murdoch’s reputation, and asked his landlady if she had such a thing as a postcard. “Well, there. I wonder if I have. If I have, it’s in the kitchen dresser, that’s a sure thing. Perhaps you’d like to come down and see the kitchen?” Michael followed her downstairs. There were no basements in Neptune Crescent, and he was glad to think his bedroom was above his sitting-room and on the top floor. It would have been hot just above the kitchen. “Miss Carlyle has her room here,” said Mrs. Murdoch, pointing next door to the kitchen. “Nice and handy for her as she’s rather late sometimes. I hate to hear anybody go creaking upstairs, I do. It makes me nervous.” The kitchen was pleasant enough and looked out upon a narrow strip of garden full of coarse plants. “They’ll be very merry and bright, won’t they?” said Mrs. Murdoch, smiling encouragement at the greenery. “It’s wonderful what you can do nowadays for threepence.” Michael asked what they were. “Why, sunflowers, of course, only they want another month yet. I have them every year—yes. They’re less trouble than rabbits or chickens. Now where did I see that postcard?” She searched the various utensils, and at last discovered the postcard stuck behind a mutilated clock. “What _will_ they bring out next?” demanded Mrs. Murdoch, surveying it with affectionate approbation. “Pretty, I call it.” A pair of lovers in black plush were sitting enlaced beneath a pink frosted moon.