On his arrival at Brinkworth Street, the young man knew at once that he would be in good hands. The air of respectability which hovered round his rooms was a little portentous, perhaps, but at least it was in welcome and vivid contrast to the cheap and dismal tawdriness of King John's Mansions. Mr. Emerson Paley, the proprietor of No. 14, and Mrs. Paley also, had something of Portman's impressiveness. It was clear that they had their own standard of taste and conduct. Moreover, Henry Harper welcomed it. To him it meant a fixing of social values. The atmosphere of No. 14, Brinkworth Street, was wholly different from that which had enveloped any home he had ever known before. The Sailor found a stimulus in these new surroundings. Brinkworth Street, its outlook and its ideals, was a cosmos he had yet to traverse and explore. Mr. Paley was in his own way surprisingly a gentleman, as Mrs. Paley in hers was surprisingly a lady; not, of course, in the way that Edward Ambrose and his new friend, Mary Pridmore, were, but still they undoubtedly stood for something--a curious, indefinable something wholly beyond the _ménage_ he had lately left, with its air of make-believe refinement which was not refinement at all. Mr. Paley and also Mrs. Paley treated him with great consideration. And it was no second-hand or spurious emotion. It seemed to be their nature to pay respect, they seemed to have a craving to pay it, just as a person there was no need to name and that person's friends had a craving to be always what they called "pulling your leg." Not only was Mr. Harper treated with deference, but solid comfort, well cooked food and punctual attention were lavished upon him, so that for his own part he was bound to honor the source whence these blessings sprang. The august shade of the relict of Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., might have been a little too much in evidence now and again for the plain and unvarnished taste of a sailor, but an ever deepening perception showed him that the very things he was inclined to despise and to laugh at--as most of the people with whom his life had been passed would undoubtedly have done--were of real importance if you were able to look at them from the right point of view. From the moment he invaded its rather oppressively respectable precincts, No. 14, Brinkworth Street, by some alchemy of the spirit of place, began to work sensibly upon the Sailor. A rapidly expanding life had been in peril of being torn asunder, but Providence, which owed him so much, had found him a harbor of refuge.