"Oh, father, no, it isn't! It is just a beautiful place, and the Spectacle Man will show me his Toby jugs and things, and there's the cat,—please let's go!"
"Of course if there is a Toby jug and a cat, there's nothing else to be desired," said Mr. Morrison, gravely, pinching the cheek of his enthusiastic daughter. However, he promised that bright and early next day they would go to look at this flat.
CHAPTER FOURTH
THEY LOOK AT A FLAT.
The house occupied by Mr. Clark the optician was old-fashioned and roomy; built in the days when ground was cheap and space need not be economized. It belonged to his nephew, whose guardian he was, and some day, when the hard times were over, it was likely to be a valuable piece of property. At present it could be rented for little or nothing as a residence, and for this reason he had decided to live in it himself, taking the first floor and turning the second and third into flats.
The dignified old mansion had the air of having stepped back in disdain from the hurry and bustle of the street, preserving in its seclusion between the tall buildings on either side something of the leisurely atmosphere of other days.
The optician himself was quite in keeping with the house. He loved old things and old ways; his business methods were those of thirty years ago, and so perhaps were most of his patrons. There were still many persons who could remember the time when he had been joint proprietor of the largest jewellery store in the city, but times had changed. In some way he had been crowded out and half forgotten, much as the old house had been.
He kept the place in the best of order; the bit of lawn that lay between the house and the street was as thrifty and green as care could make it, and was a pleasant surprise when one came upon it unexpectedly, an oasis in the desert of brick pavement.
Frances' bright eyes had noticed, in passing, the mammoth pair of spectacles swinging above the veranda, and so when she found Mrs. Gray, an old lady who had a room near theirs in the hotel, lamenting over her broken glasses, she had known where to take them.