There are streets in Chelsea practically abandoned to studios. Long low buildings of one story, with many doors in front, and great broadsides of windows at the back, multipaned windows letting in from the north the light that artists love, lined these thoroughfares which Barney in his jocular off-hand manner called “aurora borealis” streets, because, as he always explained, they were so full of “northern lights.” Such studios were all very well for the ordinary everyday artist who exhibited at the Royal Academy and places of that sort; but a painter with a soul (and, incidentally, a reliable bank account) desired something better than one of these barns, so Barney had taken a house and fitted it up to meet his requirements. Craigenputtoch House, as Barney called it in tardy recognition of the genius of Thomas Carlyle, was a building of three stories, standing back from the street in grounds of its own. The rooms on the upper floor were allowed to remain as they were, and gave Barney bedrooms for himself and his friends; his hospitality being unique and unlimited. All the partitions on the first floor had been torn away, so that this portion of the house was formed into one vast apartment, with the exception of a space for a noble landing, up to which, in dignified manner befitting a temple of art, arose a broad flight of stone steps that replaced the ordinary wooden stairway which had contented the former occupants of the house. To afford the support necessary for the upper floor, now that the partitions were taken away, huge square beams of timber had been put in, and these gave the ceiling of the roomy studio that barn roof appearance so necessary to the production of works of the higher art. Barney’s mother objected to the bare coldness of the uncovered stone stairs. Being inside the house, she said, and not the steps that led to the front door, they should have a carpet on them. Barney admitted that under ordinary circumstances this was so, and willingly offered to make a certain concession should the occasion arise. If Royalty visited him, he would put down the customary red carpet which the feet of Royalty were in the habit of treading. In fact, he admitted to his mother that a roll of red carpet had already been purchased, and was at that moment in the closet under the stairs, to be ready at a moment’s notice. But for every-day wear the steps should remain uncovered, because the stone stairways of the Pitti Palace were always bare, and as Barney intended ultimately to make Craigenputtoch House quite as celebrated in the world of art as the Florentine gallery, he would follow its precedent so far as stairs were concerned. There is nothing like beginning right.