to the eye. On the left wall was a
deal dresser full of crockery, and on the right, under the low window,
a narrow deal table. In front, opposite the door, gleamed the range,
and on either side of the range were cupboards with oak-grained
doors. There was a bright steel fender before the range, and then
a hearth-rug on which stood an oak rocking-chair. The floor was a
friendly chequer of red and black tiles. On the high mantelpiece were
canisters and an alarm-clock and utensils; sundry other utensils hung
on the walls, among the coloured images of sweet girls and Norse-like
men offered by grocers and butchers under the guise of almanacs; and
cupboard doors ajar dimly disclosed other utensils still, so that the
kitchen had the effect of a novel, comfortable kind of workshop; which
effect was helped by the clothes-drier that hung on pulley-ropes from
the ceiling, next to the gas-pendant and to a stalactite of onions.

The uncurtained window, instead of showing black, gave on another
interior, whitewashed, and well illuminated by the kitchen gas. This
other interior had, under a previous tenant of the property, been
a lean-to greenhouse, but Mrs. Maldon esteeming a scullery before a
greenhouse, it had been modified into a scullery. There it was that
Julian Maldon had preferred to make his toilet. One had to pass
through the scullery in order to get from the kitchen into the yard.
And the light of day had to pass through the imperfectly transparent
glass roof of the scullery in order to reach the window of the unused
room behind the parlour; and herein lay the reason why that room was
unused, it being seldom much brighter than a crypt.

At the table stood Rachel, in her immense pinafore-apron, busy with
knives and forks and spoons, and an enamel basin from which steam rose
gently. Louis looked upon Rachel, and for the first time in his life
liked an apron! It struck him as an exceedingly piquant addition to
the young woman's garments. It suited her; it set off the tints of her
notable hair; and it suited the kitchen. Without delaying her work,
Rachel made the protector of the house very welcome. Obviously she
was in a high state of agitation. For an instant Louis feared that the
agitation was due to anxiety on account of Mrs. Maldon.

"Nothing serious up with the old lady, is there?" he asked, pinching
the cigarette to regularize the tobacco in it.

"Oh, _no_!"

The exclamation in its absolute sincerity dissipated ever