“It is rather dark,” said Jean, “but I like it dark.  Coming in on a hot summer day it is almost like a pool; it is so cool and dark and polished.”  Mr. Reid said nothing, and Jean was torn between a desire to have her home appreciated and a desire to have this stranger take an instant dislike to it, and to leave it speedily and for ever.

“You see,” she pointed out, “the little staircase is rather steep and winding, but it is short; and the bedrooms are charming—­not very big, but so prettily shaped and with lovely views.”  Then she remembered that she should miscall rather than praise, and added, “Of course, they have all got queer ceilings; you couldn’t expect anything else in a cottage.  Will you go upstairs?”

Mr. Reid thought not, and asked if he might see the sitting-rooms.  “This,” said Jean, opening a door, “is the dining-room.”

It was the room his mother had always sat in, where the horsehair arm-chair had had its home, but it, too, had suffered a change.  Gone was the arm-chair, gone the round table with the crimson cover.  This room had an austerity unknown in the room he remembered.  It was small, and every inch of space was made the most of.  An old Dutch dresser held china and acted as a sideboard; a bare oak table, having in its centre a large blue bowl filled with berries and red leaves, stood in the middle of the room; eight chairs completed the furniture.

“This is the least nice room in the house,” Jean told him, “but we are never in it except to eat.  It looks out on the road.”

“Yes,” said Peter Reid, remembering that that was why his mother had liked it.  She could sit with her knitting and watch the passers-by.  She had always “infused” the tea when she heard the click of the gate as he came home from school.

“You will like to see the living-room,” said Jean, shivering for the effect its charm might have on a potential purchaser.  She led him in, hoping that it might be looking its worst, but, as if in sheer contrariness, the fire was burning brightly, a shaft of sunlight lay across a rug, making the colours glow like jewels, and the whole room seemed to hold out welcoming hands.  It was satisfactory (though somewhat provoking) that the stranger seemed quite unimpressed.

“You have some good furniture,” he said.

“Yes,” Jean agreed eagerly.  “It suits the room and makes it beautiful.  Can you imagine it furnished with a ‘suite’ and ordinary pictures, and draped curtains at the windows and silver photograph frames and a grand piano?  It would simply be no sort of room at all.  All its individuality would be gone.  But won’t you sit down and rest?  That hill up from the town is steep.”

Peter Reid sank thankfully into a corner of the sofa, while Jean busied herself at the writing-table so that this visitor, who looked so tired, need not feel that he should offer conversation.

Presently he said, “You are very fond of The Rigs?”