Well, one day—now this really is romantic and I am rather proud of it. My chambers are on the second floor, and are backed by an anxiously polite street between which and mine are little yards called, I think, gardens. They are so small that if you have the tree your neighbour has the shade from it. I was looking out at my back window on the day we have come to when whom did I see but the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these gardens. I put up my eyeglass to make sure, and undoubtedly it was she. But she sat there doing nothing, which was by no means my conception of the jade, so I brought a fieldglass to bear and discovered that the object was merely a lady’s jacket. It hung on the back of a kitchen chair, seemed to be a furry thing, and, I must suppose, was suspended there for an airing.
I was chagrined, and then I insisted stoutly with myself that, as it was not Mary, it must be Mary’s jacket. I had never seen her wear such a jacket, mind you, yet I was confident, I can’t tell why. Do clothes absorb a little of the character of their wearer, so that I recognised this jacket by a certain coquetry? If she has a way with her skirts that always advertises me of her presence, quite possibly she is as cunning with jackets. Or perhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in little tucks of herself.
Figure it what you please; but I beg to inform you that I put on my hat and five minutes afterward saw Mary and her husband emerge from the house to which I had calculated that garden belonged. Now am I clever, or am I not?
When they had left the street I examined the house leisurely, and a droll house it is. Seen from the front it appears to consist of a door and a window, though above them the trained eye may detect another window, the air-hole of some apartment which it would be just like Mary’s grandiloquence to call her bedroom. The houses on each side of this bandbox are tall, and I discovered later that it had once been an open passage to the back gardens. The story and a half of which it consists had been knocked up cheaply, by carpenters I should say rather than masons, and the general effect is of a brightly coloured van that has stuck forever on its way through the passage.
The low houses of London look so much more homely than the tall ones that I never pass them without dropping a blessing on their builders, but this house was ridiculous; indeed it did not call itself a house, for over the door was a board with the inscription “This space to be sold,” and I remembered, as I rang the bell, that this notice had been up for years. On avowing that I wanted a space, I was admitted by an elderly, somewhat dejected looking female, whose fine figure was not on scale with her surroundings. Perhaps my face said so, for her first remark was explanatory.
“They get me cheap,” she said, “because I drink.”
I bowed, and we passed on to the drawing-room. I forget whether I have described Mary’s personal appearance, but if so you have a picture of that sunny drawing-room. My first reflection was, How can she have found the money to pay for it all! which is always your first reflection when you see Mary herself a-tripping down the street.
I have no space (in that little room) to catalogue all the whim-whams with which she had made it beautiful, from the hand-sewn bell-rope which pulled no bell to the hand-painted cigar-box that contained no cigars. The floor was of a delicious green with exquisite oriental rugs; green and white, I think, was the lady’s scheme of colour, something cool, you observe, to keep the sun under. The window-curtains were of some rare material and the colour of the purple clematis; they swept the floor grandly and suggested a picture of Mary receiving visitors. The piano we may ignore, for I knew it to be hired, but there were many dainty pieces, mostly in green wood, a sofa, a corner cupboard, and a most captivating desk, which was so like its owner that it could have sat down at her and dashed off a note. The writing paper on this desk had the word Mary printed on it, implying that if there were other Marys they didn’t count. There were many oil-paintings on the walls, mostly without frames, and I must mention the chandelier, which was obviously of fabulous worth, for she had encased it in a holland bag.
“I perceive, ma’am,” said I to the stout maid, “that your master is in affluent circumstances.”
She shook her head emphatically, and said something that I failed to catch.
“You wish to indicate,” I hazarded, “that he married a fortune.”
This time I caught the words. They were “Tinned meats,” and having uttered them she lapsed into gloomy silence.
“Nevertheless,” I said, “this room must have cost a pretty penny.”
“She done it all herself,” replied my new friend, with concentrated scorn.
“But this green floor, so beautifully stained—”
“Boiling oil,” said she, with a flush of honest shame, “and a shillingsworth o’ paint.”
“Those rugs—”
“Remnants,” she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had been pieced together.
“The curtains—”
“Remnants.”
“At all events the sofa—”
She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built of packing cases.
“The desk—”
I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not see the drawers with their brass handles,
