“A lady wishes to see you, Flo, and she wishes to see Scamp too,” explained Mrs Jenks; and calling the dog, they went slowly out of the court.
Flo had very little time for wonder, for the lady in question lived but a few doors away, and notwithstanding her slow and painful walking she got to her house in a very few moments.
It was a tiny house, quite a scrap of a house to be found in any part of the middle of London—a house back from its neighbours, with little Gothic windows, and a great tree sheltering it. How it came to pass that no railway company, or improvement company, or company of something else, had not pounced upon it and pulled it down years ago remained a marvel; however, there it stood, and to its hall door walked Mrs Jenks, Flo, and Scamp, now.
The door was opened by a neat little parlour-maid, who grinned from ear to ear at sight of Mrs Jenks.
“Is your mistress at home, Annie?”
“That she is, ma’am, and looking out for you. You’re all to come right in, she says—the dog and all.”
So Flo found herself in a pretty hall, bright with Indian matting, and some fresh ferns towering up high in a great stone jar of water.
“We was in the country yesterday, ma’am, Miss Mary and me, and have brought back flowers, and them ’igh green things enough to fill a house with ’em,” explained the little handmaid as she trotted on in front, down one flight of stairs and up another, until she conducted them into a long low room, rendered cool and summery by the shade of the great tree outside. This room to-day was, as Annie the servant expressed it, like a flower garden. Hydrangeas, roses, carnations, wild flowers, ferns, stood on every pedestal, filled twenty, thirty vases, some of rarest china, some of commonest delf, but cunningly hid now by all kinds of delicate foliage. It was a strange little house for the midst of the city, a strange little bower of a room, cool, sweet-scented, carrying those who knew the country miles away into its shadiest depths—a room furnished with antique old carvings and odd little black-legged spindle chairs.
On one of the walls hung a solitary picture, a water-colour framed without margin, in a broad gilt frame.
A masterpiece of art it was—of art, I say? something far beyond art—genius.