"Bohemian" set--in which were many artists, both the big and the little
fry. One could "see life" there too, though, as usual, most of the
artists were very respectable people. It was a respectable art then in
vogue in England. Frith was the giant of the day, and from the wax
figures at Madame Tussaud's to pictures such as the "Rake's Progress"
the plastic arts had a moral tendency. Even the animals of Sir Edwin
Landseer were the most decorous of all four-footed creatures; Killigrew
blasphemed by calling the admired paintings still-life studies of
animals. But then Killigrew was from Paris and chanted the newer creed;
he was always comparing London unfavourably with Paris even when he was
showing it off most.

The house in Tavistock Square was grand beyond anything Ishmael had ever
imagined, if a little dismal too. It was furnished with a plethora of
red plush, polished mahogany, and alabaster vases; while terrible though
genuine curios from Mr. Killigrew's foreign agents decorated the least
likely places. You were quite likely to be greeted, on opening your
wardrobe, by a bland ostrich egg, which Mrs. Killigrew, the vaguest of
dear women, would have thrust there and forgotten. She had a
deeply-rooted conviction that there was something indecent about an
ostrich egg--probably its size, emphasising that nakedness which nothing
exhibits so triumphantly as an egg, had something to do with it.

Mrs. Killigrew was nothing if not "nice," but she was something much
better than that too. Ishmael, though he could no more help laughing at
her than could anyone else, soon felt a genuine affection for her that
he never lost. She was a little wide-eyed, wistful-looking woman, really
supremely contented with life, and, though kindness itself, quite
incapable of realising that anyone could ever really be unhappy or
wicked. "I'm sure the dear Lord knows what's best for us all," was her