“We now enter the droring-room,” she proceeded, and flinging open the door to the right was received with an indistinct cry suggestive of the words, “Oh, _damn_ it!” The stout medium-sized gentleman in an artistic green-grey Norfolk suit, from whom the cry proceeded, was kneeling on the floor close to the wide-open window, and he was engaged in lacing up a boot. He had a round, ruddy, rather handsome, amiable face with a sort of bang of brown hair coming over one temple, and a large silk bow under his chin and a little towards one ear, such as artists and artistic men of letters affect. His profile was regular and fine, his eyes expressive, his mouth, a very passable mouth. His features expressed at first only the naïve horror of a shy man unveiled. Intelligent appreciation supervened. There was a crowded moment of rapid mutual inspection. The lady’s attitude was that of the enthusiastic house-explorer arrested in full flight, falling swiftly towards apology and retreat. (It was a frightfully attractive room, too, full of the brightest colour, and with a big white cast of a statue—a Venus!—in the window.) She backed over the threshold again. “I thought you was out by that window, sir,” said the little old woman intimately, and was nearly shutting the door between them and all the beginnings of this story. But the voice of the gentleman arrested and wedged open the closing door. “I——Are you looking at the house?” he said. “I say! Just a moment, Mrs. Rabbit.” He came down the length of the room with a slight flicking noise due to the scandalized excitement of his abandoned laces. The lady was reminded of her not so very distant schooldays, when it would have been considered a suitable answer to such a question as his to reply, “No, I am walking down Piccadilly on my hands.” But instead she waved that pink paper again. “The agents,” she said. “Recommended—specially. So sorry if I intrude. I ought, I know, to have written first; but I came on an impulse.” By this time the gentleman in the artistic tie, who had also the artistic eye for such matters, had discovered that the lady was young, delightfully slender, either pretty or beautiful, he could scarcely tell which, and very, very well dressed. “I am glad,” he said, with remarkable decision, “that I was not out. _I_ will show you the house.” “’Ow _can_ you, sir?” intervened the little old woman. “Oh! show a house! Why not?” “The kitchings—you don’t understand the range, sir—it’s beyond you. And upstairs. You can’t show a lady upstairs.” The gentleman reflected upon these difficulties. “Well, I’m going to show her all I can show her anyhow. And after that, Mrs. Rabbit, you shall come in. You needn’t wait.” “I’m thinking,” said Mrs. Rabbit, folding stiff little arms and regarding him sternly. “You won’t be much good after tea, you know, if you don’t get your afternoon’s exercise.”