ars shone overhead with wonderful brilliance, and a
little bell jangled softly close at hand. All the houses were tall and
secret, with high white steps and flat faces. A cat slipped across the
street; another swiftly followed it.

St. Dreot's seemed near at hand again and Ellen the cook not so far
away. Maggie felt a sudden forlornness and desolation.

"What a very quiet street!" she whispered, as though she were afraid
lest the street should hear.

They stopped before one of the flat-faced houses; Aunt Anne rang the
bell, and an old woman with a face like a lemon helped the cabman with
the boxes. Maggie was standing in a hall that smelt of damp and
geraniums. It was intensely dark, and a shrill scream from somewhere
did not make things more pleasant.

"That's Edward the parrot," said Aunt Anne. "Take care not to approach
him too closely, dear, because he bites."

Then they went upstairs, Maggie groping her way and stumbling at the
sharp corners. The darkness grew; she knocked her knee on the corner of
something, cried out, and a suddenly opened door threw a pale green
light upon a big picture of men in armour attacking a fortified town
beneath a thundery sky. This picture wavered and faltered, hung as it
was upon a thin cord strained to breaking-point. Maggie reached the
security of the room beyond the passage, her shoulders bent a little as
though she expected to near at every instant the crashing collapse of
the armoured men. Her eyes unused to the light, she stumbled into the
room, fell into some one's arms, felt that her poor hat was crooked and
her cheeks burning, and then was rebuked, as it seemed, by the piercing
cry of Edward the parrot from the very bowels of the house.

She stammered something to the man who had held her and then let her
go. She was confused, hot and angry. "They'll think me an idiot who
can't enter a room properly." She glared about her and felt as though
she had been taken prisoner by some strange people who lived under the
sea. She was aware, when her eyes were accustomed to the dim light,
that the entrance of herself and her aunt had interrupted the
conversation of three people. Near the fireplace sat a little woman
wearing black mittens and a white lace cap; standing above her with his
arm on the mantelpiece was a thin, battered-looking gentleman with
large spectacles, high, gaunt features and a very thin head of hair;
near the door was the man against whom Maggie had collided. Sh