'Do so.'

'Once when I was out of sorts I went to the sea-coast for a change—but I am detaining you.'

'Well, I will put down the glasses and bulbs in the Pummy cupboard and return to hear your story.'

Instead of going downstairs with Salome, Philip, though he had relieved her of two glasses, went with them to the drawing-room, whence she had taken them—which was in no way assisting her. Moreover, when he was there, he put down the glasses on the table and began examining the names of the bulbs—double pink blush, single china blue, the queen of the yellows, and so on. He had offered to help Salome, but he was doing nothing of the kind; he waited till she had filled the glasses with water, planted a couple of bulbs in them, and consigned them to the depths of the cupboard. When she returned to the parlour, he was still examining the names of the tubers.

'Now,' said he, 'I will tell you about my landlady at Scarborough.' He made no attempt to carry down glasses, he detained the girl from prosecuting her work. 'I was at Scarborough for a week, and when I left my lodgings the landlady charged me thirty shillings for a toilet set, because there was a crack in the soap-dish. I had not injured it. I pointed out the fact that the crack was gray with age, that the discolouration betokened antiquity; but she was inaccessible to reason, impossible to convince. The injury done to the soap-dish spoiled the whole set, she said, and I must pay for an entire set. I might have contested the point at law; but it was hardly worth my while, so I agreed to pay the thirty shillings, only I stipulated that I should carry off the fractured soap-dish with me. Then she resisted; the soap-dish, she argued, could be of no use to me. I must leave it, and at last, when I persisted in my resolve, she let me off with a couple of shillings.'

'But why?'

'Because the cracked soap-dish was to her a source of revenue. Every lodger for years had been bled on account of that crack to the tune of thirty shillings, and that cracked soap-dish was worth many pounds per annum to that wretched woman.' Then, with a sudden tightening of the muscles at the corners of his mouth, he added, 'I know their tricks and their ways! I have been brought up among landladies, as Romulus was nursed by a wolf, and Jupiter was reared among goats.'

'I suppose there are good lodging-house keepers as well as bad ones,' said Salome, laughing.

'Charity hopeth all things,' answered Philip grimly, 'but I never came across one. Just as colliers acquire a peculiar stoop and walk, and horse-dealers a special twist in conscience, and sailors a peculiar waddle, engendered by their professions, so does lodging-house keeping produce a warp and crick and callousness in women with which they were not born. You do not know what it is, you cannot know what it is, to be brought up and to form one's opinions among landladies. It forces one to see the world, to contemplate life through their medium as through lenses that break and distort all rays. Do you recall what the King of Israel said when the King of Syria sent to him Naäman to be healed of his leprosy?'

'Yes,' answered Salome, '"See how he seeketh a quarrel against me."'