His reading, you see, lay more in circulating library lore, and he was not deep in Johnson--as few of us would be, I'm afraid, if it were not for Boswell. 'It's a confounded deal more like the "Valley of the Shadow of Death," in "Pilgrim's Progress"--you remember--that old Tamar used to read to us in the nursery,' replied Master Stanley, who had never enjoyed being quizzed by his sister, not being blessed with a remarkably sweet temper. 'If you don't like my scenery, come in, Stanley, and admire my decorations. You must tell me all the news, and I'll show you my house, and amaze you with my housekeeping. Dear me, how long it is since I've seen you.' So she led him in by the arm to her tiny drawing-room; and he laid his hat and stick, and gray paletot, on her little marquetrie-table, and sat down, and looked languidly about him, with a sly smile, like a man amused. 'It is an odd fancy, living alone here.' 'An odd necessity, Stanley.' 'Aren't you afraid of being robbed and murdered, Radie?' he said, leaning forward to smell at the pretty bouquet in the little glass, and turning it listlessly round. 'There are lots of those burglar fellows going about, you know.' 'Thank you, dear, for reminding me. But, somehow, I'm not the least afraid. There hasn't been a robbery in this neighbourhood, I believe, for eight hundred years. The people never think of shutting their doors here in summer time till they are going to bed, and then only for form's sake; and, beside, there's nothing to rob, and I really don't much mind being murdered.' He looked round, and smiled on, as before, like a man contemptuously amused, but sleepily withal. 'You are very oddly housed, Radie.' 'I like it,' she said quietly, also with a glance round her homely drawing-room. 'What do you call this, your boudoir or parlour?' 'I call it my drawing-room, but it's anything you please.' 'What very odd people our ancestors were,' he mused on. 'They lived, I suppose, out of doors like the cows, and only came into their sheds at night, when they could not see the absurd ugliness of the places they inhabited. I could not stand upright in this room with my hat on. Lots of rats, I fancy, Radie, behind that wainscoting? What's that horrid work of art against the wall?' 'A shell-work cabinet, dear. It is not beautiful, I allow. If I were strong enough, or poor old Tamar, I should have put it away; and now that you're here, Stanley, I think I'll make you carry it out to the lobby for me.' 'I should not like to touch it, dear Radie. And pray how do you amuse yourself here? How on earth do you get over the day, and, worse still, the evenings?'