presently. "I've got the very gentleman to help you with your writing."

"Indeed," said Henry, somewhat sceptical.

"Yes; he's down there in the back parlour. They say he's a great
writer," continued Aunt Tipping; "but he's not very well the last day or
two, and doesn't see anybody. To tell the truth, poor gentleman," she
confided, lowering her voice, "he's just a little too fond of his glass.
But he's as good and kind a gentleman as ever stepped, and always
regular with his rent every Monday morning."

There was usually something mysterious about Aunt Tipping's lodgers. At
their best, she had known them as elaborately wronged bye-products of
aristocracy. Many of them were lawful expectants of illegally delayed
fortunes, and at the very least they always drank romantically.

Thus it was that to the somewhat amused surprise of his family, Henry
came to take up his abode for a while with Aunt Tipping, and that his
books and the cast of Dante, and the sketch of the young Dante done in
sepia by Myrtilla Williamson's own fair hand, came to find themselves in
the incongruous environment of Tichborne Street.




CHAPTER XXXII

THE LITERARY GENTLEMAN IN THE BACK PARLOUR