alled. Her gentleman, she said, had been so
obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four weeks rather
than drive the new-comers away.

'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said the
Marchmills.

'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landlady
eloquently. 'You see, he's a different sort of young man from
most--dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be here
when the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the sea
washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place, than he does
now in the season. He'd just as soon be where, in fact, he's going
temporarily, to a little cottage on the Island opposite, for a change.'
She hoped therefore that they would come.

The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next day,
and it seemed to suit them very well. After luncheon Mr. Marchmill
strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having despatched the
children to their outdoor amusements on the sands, settled herself in
more completely, examining this and that article, and testing the
reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe door.

In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's, she
found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest. Shabby
books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in a queerly
reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant had not conceived
the possibility that any incoming person of the season's bringing could
care to look inside them. The landlady hovered on the threshold to
rectify anything that Mrs. Marchmill might not find to her satisfaction.

'I'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because the books
are here. By the way, the person who has left seems to have a good many.
He won't mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, I hope?'

'O dear no, ma'am. Yes, he has a good many. You see, he is in the
literary line himself somewhat. He is a poet--yes, really a poet--and he
has a little income of his own, which is enough to write verses on, but
not enough for cutting a figure, even if he cared to.'

'A poet! O, I did not know that.'

Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's name written
on the title-page. 'Dear me!' she continued; 'I know his name very
well--Robert Trewe--of course I do; and his writings! And it is his
rooms we have taken, and him we have turned out of his home?