“So you have brought a dog!”
I hastened to assure her that I could vouch for Kip’s good conduct, and that he would be no trouble whatever to her.
“But what about my cats?” she snapped. “By the look of him I should say he would trouble them.”
Again I declared that I would be guarantee for his behaviour.
“And you’re a lady!” she continued in the same complaining key. “Miss Lucy never told me that.”
“I hope it is no drawback?”
“Well, it is in a way,” was her unexpected reply. “I’m not a lady myself. I was a lady’s maid, and I’ve been looking for a nice homely girl who would read to me, and run to the bazaar, and be a sort of companion.”
“I think I can manage all that,” I replied, and turned to pay off the gharriwan.
The small amount of my luggage undoubtedly mollified my landlady, and having assured me that I had given the gharriwan double his fare, with considerable pomp and circumstance she preceded me into the drawing-room, which, as in most old bungalows, opened directly upon the veranda. Her air implied that she was now about to exhibit something superior and out of the common. What a room! The middle of it was occupied by a vast round ottoman, hard—I subsequently learned—as stone, covered with the most hideous black and green cretonne I had ever beheld. The floor had recently been matted with cheap and odoriferous matting. The walls were coloured a blinding blue and hung with fearful chromos. Between the walls, the matting, and the new cretonne, I gathered that this terrible apartment had been recently, as it is called, “done up.” There were a few cane chairs, a blackwood table, and an old cottage piano with a faded red silk front.
In order to reach my quarters we passed through a network of small empty chambers to a room which was large and very bare. A little bed was as an island in space, the dressing-table was also small, a camp chest of drawers the sole accommodation for my wardrobe. As I glanced around this desert of an apartment, I resolved to supply myself immediately with a writing-table and an arm-chair.