stoop and steps with a carved stone
balustrade, at the top of which perched a meek old lion of 1890, with
battered ears and a truly sensitive stone nose. A typical house of the
very well-to-do yet not wealthy "upper middle class"; a house
predicating one motor-car, three not expensive maids, brief European
tours, and the best preparatory schools and colleges for the sons.

A maid answered the door and took his card--a maid in a frilly apron
and black uniform--neither a butler nor a slatternly Biddy. In the
hall, as the maid disappeared up-stairs, Carl had an impression of
furnace heat and respectability. Rather shy, uncomfortable, anxious to
be acceptable, warning himself that as a famous aviator he need not be
in awe of any one, but finding that the warning did not completely
take, he drew off his coat and gloves and, after a swift inspection of
his tie, gazed about with more curiosity than he had ever given to any
other house.

For all the stone lion in front, this was quite the old-line
English-basement house, with the inevitable front and back
parlors--though here they were modified into drawing-room and
dining-room. The walls of the hall were decked with elaborate,
meaningless scrolls in plaster bas-relief, echoed by raised circles on
the ceiling just above the hanging chandelier, which was expensive and
hideous, a clutter of brass and knobby red-and-blue glass. The floor
was of hardwood in squares, dark and richly polished, highly
self-respecting--a floor that assumed civic responsibility from a
republican point of view, and a sound conservative business
established since 1875 or 1880. By the door was a huge Japanese vase,
convenient either for depositing umbrellas or falling over in the
dark. Then, a long mirror in a dull-red mahogany frame, and a table of
mahogany so refined that no one would ever dream of using it for
anything more useful than calling-cards. It might have been the table
by the king's bed, on which he leaves his crown on a little purple
cushion at night. Solid and ostentatious.

The drawing-room, to the left, was dark and still and unsympathetic
and expensive; a vista of brocade-covered French-gilt chairs and a
marquetry table and a table of onyx top, on which was one book bound
in ooze calf, and one vase; cream-colored heavy carpet and a crystal
chandelier; fairly meretricious paintings of rocks, and thatched
cottages, and ragged newsboys with faces like Daniel Webster, all of
them in large