He regarded her with undisguised admiration. She returned his looks with smiling, unruffled tranquillity.
"So," he said in a low voice, as though he did not wish the noise of his own words to distract his sense of seeing, concentrated on her face and lithe graceful figure, "you got my rooms ready, while you left your own in chaos?"
"You are too soon," she answered, nodding her head playfully. "If you had not come until ten, we should have had this room in order. As you see, it was well we arranged the other rooms first. Would you like to see them?"
"Not just now. I am quite content here for the present," he said, with a gallant gesture towards her.
"I don't think my brother will be very long. In fact, when you knocked I felt quite sure it was Alfred. O! here he is. Pardon me," she cried, springing up, and hurrying to the door.
In a few minutes Alfred Layard was shaking hands with the other man, saying pleasantly and easily, "I do not know, Mr. Crawford, whether it is I ought to welcome you, or you ought to welcome me. You are at once my landlord and my tenant."
"And you, on your side, necessarily are my landlord and my tenant also. Let us welcome one another, and hope we may be good friends."
With a wave of his hand he included the girl in this proposal.
"Agreed!" cried Layard cheerfully, as he again shook the short plump hand of the elder man.
"You see," said Crawford, explaining the matter with a humorous toss of the head and a chuckle, "your brother is my tenant, since he has taken this house, and I am his tenant, since I have taken two rooms in this house. I have just been saying to Miss Layard," turning from the sister to the brother, "that when you spoke to me of your sister who looked after your little boy, I imagined she must be much older than you."