Ruth Winslow's home proved to be a rather ordinary three-story-and-basement gray stone dwelling, with heavy Russian net curtains at the broad, clear-glassed windows of the first floor, and an attempt to escape from the stern drabness of the older type of New York houses by introducing a box-stoop and steps with a carved stone balustrade, at the top of which perched a meek old lion of 1890, with battered ears and a truly sensitive stone nose. A typical house of the very well-to-do yet not wealthy "upper middle class"; a house predicating one motor-car, three not expensive maids, brief European tours, and the best preparatory schools and colleges for the sons. A maid answered the door and took his card--a maid in a frilly apron and black uniform--neither a butler nor a slatternly Biddy. In the hall, as the maid disappeared up-stairs, Carl had an impression of furnace heat and respectability. Rather shy, uncomfortable, anxious to be acceptable, warning himself that as a famous aviator he need not be in awe of any one, but finding that the warning did not completely take, he drew off his coat and gloves and, after a swift inspection of his tie, gazed about with more curiosity than he had ever given to any other house. For all the stone lion in front, this was quite the old-line English-basement house, with the inevitable front and back parlors--though here they were modified into drawing-room and dining-room. The walls of the hall were decked with elaborate, meaningless scrolls in plaster bas-relief, echoed by raised circles on the ceiling just above the hanging chandelier, which was expensive and hideous, a clutter of brass and knobby red-and-blue glass. The floor was of hardwood in squares, dark and richly polished, highly self-respecting--a floor that assumed civic responsibility from a republican point of view, and a sound conservative business established since 1875 or 1880. By the door was a huge Japanese vase, convenient either for depositing umbrellas or falling over in the dark. Then, a long mirror in a dull-red mahogany frame, and a table of mahogany so refined that no one would ever dream of using it for anything more useful than calling-cards. It might have been the table by the king's bed, on which he leaves his crown on a little purple cushion at night. Solid and ostentatious.