“It is all my own work. I had lived in other people’s houses so long that I was charmed to have a home of my own, even in Lambeth. I was determined to spend very little money, and yet to make myself comfortable; so I just squatted in the next room for the first three months, with only a bedstead, a table, and a chair or two, while I prowled all over London to find the exact furniture I wanted. There’s not an article in the room that did not take me weeks to find and to buy, and there’s not an article that wasn’t a tremendous bargain. But what an egotistical old prattler I am! Women who live much alone get to be dreadful prosers. I won’t say another word about myself—at any rate, not till after I’ve made you a cup of tea after your cold walk.” She had seen the mud upon his boots, and guessed that he had walked from the Temple. “Pray do not take any trouble——” “Nonsense; it is never trouble to a woman to make tea. I give a tea-party twice a week. I hope you like tea?” “I adore it. But pray go on with your account of how you settled down here. I am warmly interested.” “That’s very good of you—but there’s not much to tell about myself,” said Miss Newton, producing some pretty old china out of an antique cupboard with glass doors, and setting out a little brass tea-tray while she talked. There was a small copper kettle singing on the old-fashioned hob, and there was a covered dish of toast in the capacious fender. Miss Newton’s dinners were ever of the slightest, but she was a sybarite as to her tea and toast. No cheap and powdery mixture; no “inferior Dosset” for her. She made her brew with a dainty precision which Theodore admired, while she went on talking. “Do you like the colour of the walls? Yes, I painted them. And you like that paper on the ceiling? I papered it. I am rather a dab at carpentering, too, and I put up all those shelves and brackets, and I covered the chairs, and stained the boards round that old Turkey carpet; and then, after a day’s hard work, it was very pleasant to go and stroll about among the bookshops of an evening and pick up a volume here and there till I got all my old friends about me. I felt like Elia; only I had no Bridget to share my pleasure.” She seated herself opposite to him with a wicker table in front of her, and began to pour out the tea. He wondered to find himself as much at home with her as if he had known her all his life. “It is very good of you to receive me so cordially,” he said, presently. “I feel that I come to you as an unauthorized intruder.” “Can you guess why I was willing to receive you?” she asked, looking at him intently and with a sudden gravity. “Can you guess why I didn’t telegraph to forbid your coming?” “Indeed, no, except because you are naturally kind.”