Albert Kinross

“ The tobacconist had grown stout and sleek and puffy. In the olden time he had been a very handsome man. Hopperton, as a boy, had looked up to the tobacconist; one of his deepest and most cherished aspirations had been to possess such features, such a figure, and just such a moustache. To-day, however, he had no wish to exchange exteriors with the tobacconist.... Seated on one of the wooden benches that besprinkle Primrose Hill, smoking the tobacconist's very best cigar, Hopperton was reviewing these and sundry other matters connected with his “big mistake.” ”

“ House-hunting and choosing furniture was a woman's job, and a man was likely to make a fool of himself if he started out on it alone, and he couldn't very well ask his sisters or any of the people who had been cold to him; so here was a real use for poor Miss Bailey, and one he hoped she could accept... He went to bed seeing large and prominent houses that made people gape and ask who lived in them. The answer was always “Mr. Hopperton,” accompanied by references to California and the Borton Oilfields. ”

“ Of course, you can decline it, for you have not been engaged to go house-hunting and buying furniture, but to give lessons and so forth to my little boy. Briefly, it is this. I am a retired business man, and I have just come back from California, where I have spent the last twenty years. I want to spend the rest of my life in my own country, and I am thinking of taking a comfortable house and furnishing it, somewhere in South Hampstead, where I was born and brought up. Now I know very little about house-hunting and furnishing. It is really a woman's business. ”

“ This evening it resurged in all its splendour; so much so, that when he threw away his second cigar and wrote off to Miss Bailey, the lies and business of his letter were the least part of that thoughtful document. They came quite easy—especially the lies. He enjoyed these terribly; that boy of his was really a “most awful lark.” He grew serious, however, when he came to the house and furniture. Yes, he'd buy them, get them; he'd chance it; life in the old country mightn't be so bad. ”

“ So far, however, that day had not arrived, and as Miss Bailey paid regularly, and made her own little bed and gave no trouble except when she caught cold and had to stay in it, the Misses McCurdy let her have the room on the distinct understanding that she must clear out of it in case it was “wanted”; that is to say, whenever a “married couple” came in and replaced the old gentleman who snored. Really, and in their heart of hearts, the Misses McCurdy never expected to let the rooms to a married couple, such couples (the lady especially) being no end of a nuisance, and always ringing the bell. ”

“ The young woman's name was Miss Bailey, and these two little wretches shrieked it aloud.
It was Miss Bailey this and Miss Bailey that from the children, and “Give Stella her book, Georgie,” and “Stop pinching Georgie, Stella,” from the governess, and, “Come off the damp grass, Georgie,” and Georgie declining, and Miss Bailey fetching him out of it, and the little girl making personal and rude remarks, always prefaced by “Miss Bailey.” She was a regular little fiend. Hopperton, a large and simple-minded man, was at last driven to act as large and simple-minded men occasionally do act. ”

“ It is not your fault that the dear fellow was taken ill, and so, as you know nothing at all about me and so forth, I enclose a cheque for your first month's salary, which will always be paid in advance, that being my business habit, and one which I believe in thoroughly, having as a young man often run into debt for no other reason than that I had to wait for my salary. ”

“ It is rather silly to go further with all this wall-paper and furnishing, and the men in the house and getting them out again. Every established couple has been through it, and the unestablished will never quite understand. Hopperton and Miss Bailey had tiffs and made it up again. ”

“ You could see the stockings and a very neat ankle as Miss Bailey was handed into the taxi-cab. The ankle, however, was wasted on the two Misses McCurdy. “So that's what's become of the cheque she asked us to change for her,” said Miss Alice; and “Nice goings on!” added Miss Esther, whose biliousness often made her say things in the morning that she was sorry for in the afternoon, and never would have said at all if she had only known. “Perhaps they're engaged,” now suggested Miss Alice ”

“ But perhaps she'd be afraid of him. He knew that women—and especially unmarried women—had a code of what they might do and what they mightn't. He had never been able to make head or tail of it himself. ”

“ He told her so as they drove on to a house agent's, and repeated that he was glad to see she hadn't taken her recent trials too seriously. Miss Bailey, sitting in a taxi-cab, and crowned with a new hat, had somehow become a very different young person from Miss Bailey doing governess and properly sacked by Mrs. Salzmann. There was a something about her that was just as new as the new hat, and quite as striking as the freshly purchased shoes and stockings. “She's enjoying herself,” meditated Jack Hopperton ”