He came down presently and Elizabeth begged to go part way so she could look around. This she was permitted to do, Mr. Kemp standing below telling her he would catch her if she should fall.
“There is quite good head room,” he said, “much more than you would suppose. Why, Elfie, one could really live here and be quite comfortable in mild weather. For an impecunious artist it would be ideal. Now, how do you suppose we’d better go about getting it? I can do all the repairing myself, and they wouldn’t be likely to charge much rent, would they?”
“If they would rent it at all,” returned Elizabeth a little doubtfully.
“I wouldn’t interfere with them: I would be very unobtrusive,” Mr. Kemp went on in a boyish way. “Do you suppose your father would take it upon himself to dicker for it on my behalf?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth answered; “but it wouldn’t do any harm to ask him.”
“Well, let’s go and do it now,” suggested the young man. “The sooner the better for me. To tell you the truth, Elfie, the Mansion House is getting on my nerves. The coffee this morning was something indescribable, and I don’t know whether it was leather, old boot-tops, the binding of a discarded book, or a worn-out saddle that they served up as steak.”
“Oh dear!” This description aroused Elizabeth’s pity and she was ready to do anything in order to release her friend from such a condition. So they scrambled out of the window again, looking back more than once at the building on the side of the hill.
“What is the name of your cousins?” asked Mr. Kemp as they went toward Elizabeth’s home.
“Gilmore,” she told him. “Cousin Tom Gilmore is the one who owns the place.”
“I don’t suppose by any stretch of the imagination it could be any relation to the Tom Gilmore who married Belle Darby.”