When they had finished, Humphrey surveyed his new home. It looked comfortable enough in the fire-light, with the green curtains drawn over the windows. The furniture was of the heavy mahogany, mid-Victorian fashion, blended with a horsehair sofa and bent-wood arm-chair, that struck a jarring note of ultra-modernity. There was a flat-topped desk in one corner by the fireplace. The mantelpiece was hideous with pink and blue vases that held dried grass and clipped bulrushes. Looking round more carefully, he saw that Moses himself could not have had more bulrushes to screen him than Mrs Wayzgoose had put for the delight of her lodgers. There were bulrushes in the mirror over the sideboard, bulrushes in a gaily-decorated stand whose paint hid its drain-pipe pedigree, bulrushes in another bloated vase on a fretted ebony stand by the window. Who shall explain this extraordinary passion for bulrushes that still holds in its thrall the respectable landladies of England?
"I must have them cleared away," said Humphrey.
Beaver smiled. "You just try!" he said meaningly. "Anyhow, you're better off than I am, mine's paper fans."
He rang the bell, and a stout, placid-faced woman appeared at the door. She wore at her neck a large topaz-coloured stone, as large as a saucer, set in a circle of filigree gold, and heavy-looking lumps of gold dangled from her ears. Her hands, with their fingers interlocked, rested on the ends of the shawl that made her appear even more ample than she was.
"This is Mr Quain, Mrs Wayzgoose," said Beaver.
Mrs Wayzgoose's face fell apart in her welcoming smile—the smile that her lodgers saw only once. It was a wonderful, carefully-studied smile, beginning with the gradual creasing of the mouth, extending earwards, joyfully, and finally spreading until the nose and the eyes were brought into the scheme.
"I hope you find everything you want, Mr Quain," she said.
"Everything's very comfortable," Humphrey answered.
"Do you take tea or coffee with your breakfasts, Mr Quain?"