In the days of the famous oculist the room must have been a maid’s. It was still furnished like a maid’s in a house of the second order. A rickety iron bedstead supported a sagging mattress covered with a cotton counterpane in imitated crochet-work. A table, a washstand, a chair, and a chest of drawers were perhaps drearier than they might have been, because of the sick light of the gas-jet. On a drab wooden mantelpiece, which enshrined a board covered with a piece of cretonne where once had been a fireplace, stood the only decoration in the room, three large fungi, painted with landscapes. The fungi were of the triangular sort which grow about the trunks of trees. There was a big one in the middle of the mantelpiece, and smaller ones at each end, giving glimpses of rivers and bays, with castles on headlands, to one tired of the prospect of Meeting-House Green. Taking the initiatory three dollars from my purse, I bent to study these objects of art.
Once more the act was ingratiating to my hostesses.
"That’s my work," said the little woman who had admitted me to the house. Her tone was one of shy pride, of a kind of fluttered boastfulness.
"My sister’s an artist," the elder explained, taking my three one-dollar bills as if their number didn’t matter, but making conversation in order to count them surreptitiously. "She’s a widow, too, Mrs. Leeming. I’m Miss Smith. We’ve had great sorrows. We try not to complain too much, but—"
A long-drawn sigh with a quiver in it said the rest, while Mrs. Leeming’s eyes spilled tears with the readiness of a pair of fountain cups.
To escape the emotional I returned to my inspection of the landscapes, at which I was destined to gaze for another two years.
"Are these studies of—of Italy?" I asked, for the sake of showing appreciation.
Mrs. Leeming recovered herself sufficiently to be faintly indignant.
"Oh no! I never copy. I work only from imagination. Landscapes just come to me—and all different."
Before they left me Miss Smith managed to convey a few of the principles on which they conducted their house.
"We’ve three very refined gentlemen at present, two salesmen and a Turkish-bath attendant. One has to be so careful. We almost never take gentlemen who don’t bring reference; but in your case, Mr. Soames—well, one can see." Her wan, suffering smile flickered up for a minute and died down. "There’s a sort of free-masonry, isn’t there? We _have_ taken gentlemen on that, and they’ve never disappointed us."