The young girl, opening the front door, had said:  “Do you want to see father?” And instantly the words were out George had realized that she might have said:  “Did you want to see father?” ... in the idiom of the shop-girl or clerk, and that if she had said ‘did’ he would have been gravely disappointed and hurt.  But she had not.  Of course she had not!  Of course she was incapable of such a locution, and it was silly of him to have thought otherwise, even momentarily.  She was an artist.  Entirely different from the blonde and fluffy Mrs. John Orgreave—­(and a good thing too, for Mrs. John with her eternal womanishness had got on his nerves)—­Miss Haim was without doubt just as much a lady, and probably a jolly sight more cultured, in the true sense.  Yet Miss Haim had not in the least revealed herself to him in the hall as she indicated the depository for his hat and stick and opened the door of the sitting-room.  She had barely smiled.  Indeed she had not smiled.  She had not mentioned the weather.  On the other hand, she had not been prim or repellent.  She had revealed nothing of herself.  Her one feat had been to stimulate mightily his curiosity and his imagination concerning her—­rampant enough even before he entered the house!

The house—­what he saw of it—­suited her and set her off, and, as she was different from Mrs. John, so was the house different from the polished, conventional abode of Mrs. John at Bedford Park.  To George’s taste it knocked Bedford Park to smithereens.  In the parlour, for instance, an oak chest, an oak settee, an oak gate-table, one tapestried easy chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old engravings in maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small portraits in maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece and no clock, self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two windows opposite each other at either end of the long room), sundry rugs on the dark-stained floor, and so on!  Not too much furniture, and not too much symmetry either.  An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness!  The room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp, with a paper shade hand-painted in a design of cupids—­delightful personal design, rough, sketchy, adorable!  She had certainly done it.

George sat on the oak settle, fronting the old man in the easy chair.  It was a hard, smooth oak settle; it had no upholstering nor cushion; but George liked it.

“May I smoke?” asked George.

“Please do.  Please do,” said Mr. Haim, who was smoking a cigarette himself, with courteous hospitality.  However, it was a match and not a cigarette that he offered to George, who opened his own dandiacal case.