ed.

There was a crowded moment of rapid mutual inspection. The lady's
attitude was that of the enthusiastic house-explorer arrested in full
flight, falling swiftly towards apology and retreat. (It was a
frightfully attractive room, too, full of the brightest colour, and with
a big white cast of a statue--a Venus!--in the window.) She backed over
the threshold again.

"I thought you was out by that window, sir," said the little old woman
intimately, and was nearly shutting the door between them and all the
beginnings of this story.

But the voice of the gentleman arrested and wedged open the closing
door.

"I----Are you looking at the house?" he said. "I say! Just a moment,
Mrs. Rabbit."

He came down the length of the room with a slight flicking noise due to
the scandalized excitement of his abandoned laces. The lady was reminded
of her not so very distant schooldays, when it would have been
considered a suitable answer to such a question as his to reply, "No, I
am walking down Piccadilly on my hands." But instead she waved that pink
paper again. "The agents," she said. "Recommended--specially. So sorry
if I intrude. I ought, I know, to have written first; but I came on an
impulse."

By this time the gentleman in the artistic tie, who had also the
artistic eye for such matters, had discovered that the lady was young,
delightfully slender, either pretty or beautiful, he could scarcely tell
which, and very, very well dressed. "I am glad," he said, with
remarkable decision, "that I was not out. _I_ will show you the house."

"'Ow _can_ you, sir?" intervened the little old woman.

"Oh! show a house! Why not?"

"The kitchings--you don't understand the range, sir--it's beyond you.
And upstairs. You can't show a lady upstairs."

The gentleman reflected upon these difficulties.

"Well, I'm going to show her all I can show her anyhow. And after that,
Mrs. Rabbit, you shall come in. You needn't wait."

"I'm thinking," said Mrs. Rabbit, folding stiff little arms and
regarding him sternly. "You won't be much good after tea, you know, if
you don't get your afternoon's exercise."

"Rendez-vous in the kitchen, Mrs. Rabbit," said Mr. Brumley, firmly, and
Mrs. Rabbit after a moment of mute struggle disappeared discontentedly.

"I do not want to be the least bit a bother," said the lady. "I'm
intruding, I know, without the least bit of notice. I _do_ hope I'm not
disturbing you----" she seemed to make an effort to stop