Leaving the window, he gazed around the little room with an impulse of curiosity. Who had lived here before him? A clerk? A travelling salesman? Perhaps one of the numerous indigent gentlewomen that formed so large and so important a part of the population of Dinwiddie? The walls were smeared with a sickly blue wash, and in several places there were the marks left from the pictures of the preceding lodger. An old mahogany bureau, black with age and ill usage, stood crosswise in the corner behind the door, and reflected in the dim mirror he saw his own face looking back at him. A film of dust lay over everything in the room, over the muddy blue of the walls, over the strip of discoloured matting on the floor, over the few fine old pieces of furniture, fallen now into abject degradation. The handsome French bed, placed conveniently between door and window, stood naked to the eyes, with its cheap husk mattress rolled half back, and its bare slats, of which the two middle ones were tied together with rope, revealing conspicuously its descent from elegance into squalor. As he saw it, the room was the epitome of tragedy, yet in the centre of it, on one of the battered and broken-legged Heppelwhite chairs, sat Mrs. Peachey, rosy, plump, and pretty, regarding him with her slightly quizzical smile. "Yes, life, of course, is sad if you stop to think about it," her smile seemed to assure him; "but the main thing, after all, is to be happy in spite of it." "Do you wish to stay here to-night?" she asked, seeing that he had put down his bag. "If you will let me. But I am afraid it will be inconvenient." She shook her head. "Not if you don't mind the dust. The room has been shut up for weeks, and the dust is so dreadful in the spring. The servants have gone out," she added, "but I'll bring you some sheets for your bed, and you can fill your pitcher from the spout at the end of the hall. Only be careful not to stumble over the step there. It is hard to see when the gas is not lit." "You won't object to my putting shelves around the walls?" he asked, while she pushed the mattress into place with the light and condescending touch of one who preserves the aristocratic manner not only in tragedy, but even in toil. It was, indeed, her peculiar distinction, he came to know afterward, that she worked as gracefully as other women played. "Couldn't you find room enough without them?" she inquired while her gaze left the mattress and travelled dubiously to the mantelpiece. "It seems a pity for you to go to any expense about shelves, doesn't it?" "Oh, they won't cost much. I'll do the work myself, and I'll do it in the mornings when it won't disturb anybody. I daresay I'll have to push that bed around a bit in order to make space."