thereens. In the parlour, for
instance, an oak chest, an oak settee, an oak gate-table, one tapestried
easy chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a
self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old engravings in
maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small portraits in
maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece and no clock,
self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two windows opposite
each other at either end of the long room), sundry rugs on the
dark-stained floor, and so on! Not too much furniture, and not too much
symmetry either. An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness! The
room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp, with a paper shade
hand-painted in a design of cupids--delightful personal design, rough,
sketchy, adorable! She had certainly done it.

George sat on the oak settle, fronting the old man in the easy chair. It
was a hard, smooth oak settle; it had no upholstering nor cushion; but
George liked it.

"May I smoke?" asked George.

"Please do. Please do," said Mr. Haim, who was smoking a cigarette
himself, with courteous hospitality. However, it was a match and not a
cigarette that he offered to George, who opened his own dandiacal case.

"I stayed rather late at the office to-night," said George, as he blew
out those great clouds with which young men demonstrate to the world
that the cigarette is actually lighted. And as Mr. Haim, who was
accustomed to the boastings of articled pupils, made no comment, George
proceeded, lolling on the settle and showing his socks: "You know, I
like Chelsea. I've always had a fancy for it." He was just about to
continue cosmopolitanly: "It's the only part of London that's like
Paris. The people in the King's Road," etc., when fortunately he
remembered that Mr. Haim must have overheard these remarks of Mr.
Enwright, and ceased, rather awkwardly. Whereupon Mr. Haim suggested
that he should see the house, and George said eagerly that he should
like to see the house.

"We've got one bedroom more than we want," Mr. Haim remarked as he led
George to the hall.

"Oh yes!" said George politely.

The hall had a small bracket-lamp, which Mr. Haim unhooked, and then he
opened a door opposite to the door of the room which they had quitted.

"Now this is a bedroom," said he, holding the lamp high.

George was startled. A ground-floor bedroom would have been unthinkable
at Bedford Park. Still, in a flat.... M