Within the sunny, airy house there was absolute silence, and perfect stillness. The King crossed the broad, square hall, a pleasant retreat, with its gaily coloured chintz covered chairs, and ottoman, its piano, its bookcases, and its big blue bowls, full of roses, and passed straight up the glistening white staircase, which led to Uncle Bond's quarters on the upper floor. At the head of the staircase, he turned to his left, down a short corridor, in which stood the door of Uncle Bond's writing room. On reaching the door, he paused, for a moment or two, very much as a swimmer pauses, on the high diving board, before he plunges into the deep end of the swimming bath. Then, smiling a little at his own nervous tremors, he knocked at the door, and, opening it without waiting for any reply, entered the room. The writing room in which Uncle Bond spent his working hours extended along the whole breadth of the house. One side of the room, the side directly opposite to the door, was almost entirely made up of windows, which commanded an uninterrupted view of the garden, and beyond the garden, of a superb sweep of the surrounding, thickly wooded, park-like country. The three other sides of the room were covered with a plain, grey paper, and were bare of all ornament. No pictures, no bookcases, and no pieces of bric-à-brac were displayed in the room. This complete absence of decoration gave a conspicuous, and most unusual, suggestion of emptiness to the whole interior. None the less, with many of the windows wide open, and with the brilliant, summer sunshine streaming in through them, the room had a charm, as well as a character of its own. Above all else, it was a man's room. There was space in which to move about. There was light. And there was air. Uncle Bond was seated, at the moment the King entered, at a large writing table, which stood in the centre of the room, with his back to the door, busy writing. The King closed the door quietly behind him, and then halted, just inside the room, and waited, as he had seen Judith do in similar circumstances. Uncle Bond did not look round but went on writing. Clearly a sentence, or a paragraph, had to be finished. Uncle Bond's writing table was bare and empty like the room in which it stood. The blotting pad on which the little man was writing, a neat pile of completed manuscript on his left, and a packet, from which he drew a fresh supply of paper as he required it, which lay on his right, were the only objects visible on the table. No paraphernalia of pen and ink was in evidence. Uncle Bond worked in pencil. No inkstand, or pen, invented by the wit of man, could satisfy him.