king my brown boots," and she with downcast eyes,
answered, "Yes, sir; I will indeed."

His room was in the pediment. Classical architecture, like all things in
this world that attempt serenity, is bound to have its lapses into the
undignified, and Cadover lapsed hopelessly when it came to Stephen's
room. It gave him one round window, to see through which he must lie
upon his stomach, one trapdoor opening upon the leads, three iron
girders, three beams, six buttresses, no circling, unless you count the
walls, no walls unless you count the ceiling and in its embarrassment
presented him with the gurgly cistern that supplied the bath water. Here
he lived, absolutely happy, and unaware that Mrs. Failing had poked him
up here on purpose, to prevent him from growing too bumptious. Here he
worked and sang and practised on the ocharoon. Here, in the crannies, he
had constructed shelves and cupboards and useless little drawers. He had
only one picture--the Demeter of Onidos--and she hung straight from the
roof like a joint of meat. Once she was in the drawing-room; but
Mrs. Failing had got tired of her, and decreed her removal and this
degradation. Now she faced the sunrise; and when the moon rose its light
also fell on her, and trembled, like light upon the sea. For she was
never still, and if the draught increased she would twist on her string,
and would sway and tap upon the rafters until Stephen woke up and said
what he thought of her. "Want your nose?" he would murmur. "Don't you
wish you may get it" Then he drew the clothes over his ears, while above
him, in the wind and the darkness, the goddess continued her motions.

Today, as he entered, he trod on the pile of sixpenny reprints. Leighton
had brought them up. He looked at the portraits in their covers, and
began to think that these people were not everything. What a fate,
to look like Colonel Ingersoll, or to marry Mrs. Julia P. Chunk! The
Demeter turned towards him as he bathed, and in the cold water he sang--

"They aren't beautiful, they aren't modest;
I'd just as soon follow an old stone goddess,"

and sprang upward through the skylight on to the roof. Years ago, when
a nurse was washing him, he had slipped from her soapy hands and got up
here. She implored him to remember that he was a little gentleman; but
he forgot the fact--if it was a fact--and not even the butler could get
him down. Mr. Failing, who was sitting alone in the garden too ill to
read,