“Well, I sha’n’t be wanting to get away from you,” she answered, smiling. “Not very far, Harold!” “Are your people still abusing me?” He put the question with a laugh. “They never abused you, only me.” Then came the irrepressible question: “Do you like my new frock? I put it on on purpose--for the house, you know.” “Our home!” he murmured, rather sentimentally, it must be confessed. The question about the frock he did not answer; he was thinking of the home. Winifred was momentarily grateful to a stout lady at the next table, who put up her glass, looked at the frock, and with a nod of approval called her companion’s attention to it. This was while Harold paid the bill. Then they took another cab, and headed north--through Berkeley Square, where Winifred would have liked, but did not expect, to stop, and so up to Oxford Street. Here they bore considerably to the east, then plunged north again and drove through one or two long streets. Harold, who had made the journey before, paid no heed to the route, but talked freely of delightful hours which they were to enjoy together, of books to read and thoughts to think, and of an intimate sympathy which, near as they were already to one another, the home and the home life alone could enable them fully to realise. Winifred listened; but far down in her mind now was another question, hardly easier to stifle than that about the frock. “Where are we going to?” would have been its naked form; but she yielded no more to her impulse than to look about her and mark and wonder. At last they turned by a sharp twist from a long narrow street into a short narrower street, where a waggon by the curbstone forced the cab to a walk, and shrill boys were playing an unintelligible noisy game. “What queer places we pass through!” she cried with a laugh, as she laid her hand on his arm and turned her face to his. “Pass through! We’re at home,” he answered, returning her laugh. “At home, Winnie!” He pointed at a house on the right-hand side, and, immediately after, the cab stopped. Winifred got out, holding her skirt back from contact with the wheel. Harold, in his eagerness to ring the door bell, had forgotten to render her this service. She stood on the pavement for a moment looking about her. One of the boys cried: “Crikey, there’s a swell!” and she liked the boy for it. Then she turned to the house. “It wants a lick of paint,” said Harold cheerfully, as he rang the bell again. “It certainly does,” she admitted, looking up at the dirty walls. An old woman opened the door; she might be said, by way of metaphor, to need the same process as the walls; a very narrow passage was disclosed behind her. “Welcome!” said Harold, giving Winifred his hand and then presenting her to the old woman. “This is my future wife,” he explained. “We’ve come to look at the house. But we won’t bother you, Mrs Blidgett, we’d rather run over it by ourselves. We shall enjoy that, sha’n’t we, Winnie?”