Viola's work-basket was on a small table by the wall, and there were other signs of feminine occupancy in the room. It looked cozy enough, with a bright fire burning, the curtains drawn and the gas lit; for it was getting dark outside. Bastian evidently made use of the large shabby easy chair by the fire, for there was a tobacco jar and an array of pipes on the table by its side, and a book or two. With his daughter sitting opposite to him, on a winter evening, it was possible to imagine him taking pleasure in his home life. It would be quieter and less marked by poverty than Wilbraham had pictured it. A faint odour of the tobacco that Bastian used hung about, but there were flowers in a vase on Viola's table, and fruit in a plaited basket on the sideboard. The sideboard, apt to be so much in evidence in furnished lodgings, had none of the paraphernalia of meals on it in the way of cruets or bottles. In fact, there were no bottles to be seen anywhere. Wilbraham noticed that at once, for his own trouble had made him acutely sensitive; he had no fears now of succumbing to a temptation to drink, but the signs of drinking by Bastian would have affected him unhappily. He was inclined to believe that he had to some extent misread Bastian, on his first acquaintance with him. It could not be his habitual custom to drink as much as he had done on that afternoon, or Viola would be more affected by it than she was. She had none of the air of a girl whose life had been saddened by a father's gross intemperance; and if Bastian had been kept down in the world by this failing of his, as he had said he had, his poverty was shown by this room to be more relative than actual.
Wilbraham dismissed the unpleasant question of intemperance, in relief at the signs of comfort and refinement that he saw about him. The table in the middle of the room was laid for tea, as if that was the chief evening meal here. Wilbraham hoped that Bastian would not come in for it until he had talked to Viola.
He made his way to the mantelpiece, upon which were a good many photographs. The photographs in a room tell you more than anything about its occupants.
Something was told in this instance by the fact that they were all a good many years old. It meant, for one thing, that Viola and her father must have lived here for some time, and for another that they could have made few friends of late years.