The Bijou had a small dining-room with one very large window in two sheets of plate glass, and a projecting balcony full of flowers; a still smaller library, which opened on a square yard enclosed. Here were a great many pots, with flowers dead or dying from neglect. On the first floor a fair-sized drawing-room, and a tiny one at the back: on the second floor, one good bedroom, and a dressing-room, or little bedroom: three garrets above.
Rosa was in ecstasies. “It is a nest,” said she.
“It is a bank-note,” said the agent, stimulating equal enthusiasm, after his fashion. “You can always sell the lease again for more money.”
Christopher kept cool. “I don't want a house to sell, but to live in, and do my business; I am a physician: now the drawing-room is built over the entrance to a mews; the back rooms all look into a mews: we shall have the eternal noise and smell of a mews. My wife's rest will be broken by the carriages rolling in and out. The hall is fearfully small and stuffy. The rent is abominably high; and what is the premium for, I wonder?”
“Always a premium in Mayfair, sir. A lease is property here: the gentleman is not acquainted with this part, madam.”
“Oh, yes, he is,” said Rosa, as boldly as a six years' wife: “he knows everything.”
“Then he knows that a house of this kind at a hundred and thirty pounds a year in Mayfair is a bank-note.”
Staines turned to Rosa. “The poor patients, where am I to receive them?”
“In the stable,” suggested the house agent.
“Oh!” said Rosa, shocked.