The little woman advanced slowly with her eyes fixed malevolently on the pink paper. She seemed to be stalking it. “This is Black Strands?” repeated the tall lady. “I should be so sorry if I disturbed you—if it isn’t; ringing the bell like that—and all. You can’t think——” “This is Black _Strand_,” said the little old woman with a note of deep reproach, and suddenly ceased to look over her glasses and looked through them. She looked no kindlier through them, and her eye seemed much larger. She was now regarding the lady in the car, though with a sustained alertness towards the pink paper. “I suppose,” she said, “you’ve come to see over the place?” “If it doesn’t disturb anyone; if it is quite convenient——” “Mr. Brumley is _hout_,” said the little old woman. “And if you got an order to view, you got an order to view.” “If you think I might.” The lady stood up in the car, a tall and graceful figure of doubt and desire and glossy black fur. “I’m sure it looks a very charming house.” “It’s _clean_,” said the little old woman, “from top to toe. Look as you may.” “I’m sure it is,” said the tall lady, and put aside her great fur coat from her lithe, slender, red-clad body. (She was permitted by a sudden civility of Clarence’s to descend.) “Why! the windows,” she said, pausing on the step, “are like crystal.” “These very ’ands,” said the little old woman, and glanced up at the windows the lady had praised. The little old woman’s initial sternness wrinkled and softened as the skin of a windfall does after a day or so upon the ground. She half turned in the doorway and made a sudden vergerlike gesture. “We enter,” she said, “by the ’all.... Them’s Mr. Brumley’s ’ats and sticks. Every ’at or cap ’as a stick, and every stick ’as a ’at _or_ cap, and on the ’all table is the gloves corresponding. On the right is the door leading to the kitching, on the left is the large droring-room which Mr. Brumley ’as took as ’is study.” Her voice fell to lowlier things. “The other door beyond is a small lavatory ’aving a basing for washing ’ands.” “It’s a perfectly delightful hall,” said the lady. “So low and wide-looking. And everything so bright—and lovely. Those long, Italian pictures! And how charming that broad outlook upon the garden beyond!” “You’ll think it charminger when you see the garding,” said the little old woman. “It was Mrs. Brumley’s especial delight. Much of it—with ’er own ’ands.”