“I felt sure if Mr. Dalbrook had been living at Myrtle Cottage under the name of Danvers there was a lady mixed up in it, and, being in the Long Vacation, when I knew he generally went abroad, I thought I would try and satisfy myself about him. I thought I should feel more comfortable in waiting upon him when I knew the worst. And then Camberwell Grove was such a little way off. It would be just a nice outing for me of a summer evening; so what did I do one lovely warm afternoon but take my tea a little earlier than usual, and trot off to the corner of Lancaster Place, where I wait for a Waterloo ’bus coming sauntering along the Strand as if time was made for slaves, and there was no such things as loop-lines or trains to be caught. I hadn’t no train to catch, so I didn’t mind the sauntering and the dawdling and the taking up and setting down. I had all the summer evening before me when I got out at the Green and made my way to the Grove. It’s a beautiful romantic place, Camberwell Grove, sir. I don’t know whether you know it, but if you do I’m sure you’ll own that there ain’t a prettier neighbourhood near London. Twenty years ago they used still to show you the garden where George Barnwell murdered his uncle, but I dare say that’s been done away with by now. It took me a good time to find Myrtle Cottage, for it was one of the smallest houses in the Grove, and it stood back in a pretty little garden, and there was nothing on the gate to tell if it was Myrtle or otherwise. But I did find it at last, thanks to a young housemaid who was standing at the gate, talking to a grocer’s lad. The grocer’s lad made off when he saw me, and for the first few minutes the girl was inclined to be disagreeable; but she came round very quickly, and I dare say she was glad to have some one to talk to on that solitary summer evening. ‘Cook’s out for her holiday,’ she says, ‘and I can’t stop in the house alone.’ And then we got talking, and after we’d talked a bit standing at the gate, she asked me into the garden, where there was a long narrow grass plot, screened off from the high road by two horse-chestnut trees and some laburnums, and there was some garden chairs and a table on the grass, and the young woman asked me to sit down. She’d got her work-basket out there, and she’d been making herself an apron. ‘I can’t bear the house of a summer evening,’ she says, ‘it gives me the horrors.’ Well, we talked of her master and mistress, as was natural. She’d lived with them over a twelvemonth, and it was a pretty good place, but very dull, and the missus had a temper, and was dreadfully particular, and expected things as nice as if she had ten servants instead of two, and was very mean into the bargain, and seemed afraid of spending money. ‘I shouldn’t be so particular, if I was her,’ the girl said, and then she told me that she knew things wasn’t all right, though they seemed a very respectable couple, and the lady went to church regularly.”