the kindness to their daughter in the matter of the 'bus fare, and so
accounted for anything unusual in their invitation. They posed as simple
gentlefolk, a little hostile to the rush and gadding-about of London,
preferring a secluded and unpretentious quiet.

When Marion got out the white table-cloth from the sideboard-drawer for
tea, a card bearing the word "APARTMENTS" fell to the floor. I picked it
up and gave it to her before I realised from her quickened colour that I
should not have seen it; that probably had been removed from the window
in honour of my coming.

Her father spoke once in a large remote way of he claims of business
engagements, and it was only long afterwards I realised that he was a
supernumerary clerk in the Walham Green Gas Works and otherwise a useful
man at home. He was a large, loose, fattish man with unintelligent brown
eyes magnified by spectacles; he wore an ill-fitting frock-coat and a
paper collar, and he showed me, as his great treasure and interest, a
large Bible which he had grangerised with photographs of pictures. Also
he cultivated the little garden-yard behind the house, and he had a
small greenhouse with tomatoes. "I wish I 'ad 'eat," he said. "One can
do such a lot with 'eat. But I suppose you can't 'ave everything you
want in this world."

Both he and Marion's mother treated her with a deference that struck me
as the most natural thing in the world. Her own manner changed, became
more authoritative and watchful, her shyness disappeared. She had taken
a line of her own I gathered, draped the mirror, got the second-hand
piano, and broken her parents in.

Her mother must once have been a pretty woman; she had regular features