reached them by means of an uncleanly train, whose driver seemed to be
perpetually on the look-out for an excuse to stop with a jolt. You got
out--usually ten minutes late--at a smoke-grimed station, and emerged
into a wide thoroughfare, lined on either side with shops of the
margarine-and-spot-cash variety, and horrible with the screeching and
rattling of gigantic municipal trams, which appeared to run solely for
the pleasure of the motorman and conductor. The third turning on the
right and then the second on the left brought you to Mrs. Benn's house,
semidetached and severe looking, with heavy curtains and a brass plate
on a front door bearing the single word "Apartments."

Jimmy groaned inwardly as the cab drew up at the little iron gate, and
he wished, once more, that he had not given way to his sister. A band,
obviously the product of a happy and musical Fatherland, was just
packing up its music stands some fifty yards lower down the street;
whilst, as he mounted the steps of the house, two Dagos appeared round
the next corner, trundling a piano organ, on the top of which was seated
what was apparently a small and long-tailed relative of their own. His
rooms, however--two on the first floor--though small, were quite
cheerful for their kind, whilst the meat tea, which the landlady
presently brought up, was distinctly promising.

He had no stuff of his own, beyond the clothes in his trunks, not even a
book or a photograph; and during his wandering days the lack of such
things had never struck him; but now he found himself registering a
mental vow to buy some pictures as soon as possible, if only to have an
excuse for banishing the German reproductions of mid-Victorian art
which disfigured the walls of his sitting-room. The painters of the
originals had all borne great names, or at least had been accounted
great in their generation; but as he sat smoking after tea, and staring
at these glazed abominations, he wondered who had been the greater
sinner, the English artist or the Teutonic engraver; probably the
former, he told himself, for, after all, the latter had only spoiled
what detail there might have been; he had copied the smugness and the
false sentiment, perhaps rejoiced in them as being essentially the
products of Teutonic thought, but it had been the Englishman who had put
that smugness on to the canvas in the first case.

Unfortunately, it was easier to want new pictures than to get them, even
though they