"I'll tell you what it is," said the boy abruptly, and in a solemn voice, "it's something as has to do with science. There's something soft inside it, I can feel. P'raps there's something alive in it--I shouldn't wonder. Oh! P'raps there's gun-cotton in it. I'd take care how I carried it if I was you, Mary, or p'raps it'll go off and blow you to bits!" "Oh goodness!" exclaimed the housemaid, "I won't touch it. Just you take it yourself and put it into master's study; it'll be safest there." So the boy, with a grin of extreme satisfaction at the success of his assault on the housemaid's nerves, helped her to carry the rest of the luggage upstairs, and then deposited the mysterious bag in a corner of the doctor's own special sanctum. Now this study was a room worth describing, and yet not very easy to describe. The doctor's house itself was one of those not very attractive-looking dwellings which are to be found by streetfuls running from square to square in the west end of London. It had stood patiently there for many a long year, as was evident from the antiquated moulding over the doorway, and from a great iron extinguisher, in which the link-bearers of old used to quench their torches, which formed part of the sombre- coloured ironwork that skirted the area. The gloomy monotony of the street was slightly relieved by a baker's shop at one corner and a chemist's at the other. But for these, the general aspect would have been one of unbroken dinginess. Nor did the interior of the doctor's house present a much livelier appearance. The entrance-hall, which was dark and narrow, had rather a sepulchral smell about it, which was not otherwise than in keeping with some shelves of books at the farther end--the overflow apparently of the doctor's library; the tall, dark volumes therein looking like so many tombs of the _dead_ languages. To the left, as you entered the hall, was a dining-room massively furnished, adorned with a few family portraits, and as many vigorous engravings. But there lacked that indescribable air of comfort which often characterises those rooms devoted to the innocent and social refreshment of the body at meal-times. The chairs, though in themselves all that dining-room chairs ought to be, did not look as if on a habitual good understanding with one another; some were against the wall, and others stood near the table, and at irregular distances, as though they never enjoyed that cozy fraternity so desirable in well- conditioned seats. Books, too, lay about in little zigzag heaps; while a bunch of keys, a pair of lady's gloves, and a skein of coloured wool lay huddled together on the centre of the sideboard. The whole arrangement, or rather disarrangement, of the room bespoke, on the part of the presiding female management, an indifference to those minor details of order and comfort a due attention to which makes home (a genuine English home) the happiest spot in the world.