Through the gloom two iron beds, covered with coarse white counterpanes, sagged in the outlines of their mattresses, as beds do after a great many people have slept in them. A low wicker armchair sagged in the seat as armchairs do after a great many people have sat in them. A great many people had passed through this room, wearing it down, wearing it out; and yet there was a woman in the world whose soul leaped toward it as the hearth of her affections. Because it was architecturally dark a paper of olive-green arabesques on an olive-green background had been glued on the walls to make it darker still; and because it was now as dark as it could be made, the table, the chest of drawers, the washstand, like the doors, were all of the darkest brown. Miss Flowerdew pointed to their bare tops to say: "Lydia has her own covers, and when she puts her photographs and knickknacks round it makes a home for her." "Say, isn’t it grand!" Drinkwater cried, looking round with his sightless eyes. "It’s grand for the money," Miss Flowerdew corrected. "It’s not the Waldorf-Astoria, nor yet is it what I was used to when on the stage; but it’s clean"—which it was—"and only respectable people have roomed here. Come, young man, and I’ll show you how to find your way." Miss Flowerdew may have been on the stage, but she ought to have been a nurse. Not even Lydia Blair could take hold of a helpless man with such tenderness of strength. Holding Drinkwater by the hand, she showed him how to find the conveniences of this nest, pointing out the fact that the bath-room was the first door on the right as you went into the hall, and only a step away. "I hope I sha’n’t give you any more trouble, lady, after this," the blind boy breathed, gratefully. "Trouble! Of course you’ll give me trouble! The man who doesn’t give a woman trouble is not a man. I’ve had male roomers so neat and natty you’d have sworn they were female ones—and I got rid of ’em. When a man doesn’t know whether to put his boots on the mantelpiece or in the wash-basin when he takes them off, I can see I’ve got something to take care of. I guess I may as well cart these away." The reference was to two photographs that stood on the ledges of the huge black-walnut mirror.