gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
temperament that he was so openly and naïvely delighted with the view of
the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs. Seacon was
emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had intended. She
soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal
called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a
demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their
being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage,
since they were nearer the noises of the street--in fact, the house
being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to
exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the
_ménage_. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his
boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid
linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even
on Sundays. It is true he did net go to church, but slept on till Roxdal
returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him
out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the
mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in
the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that
separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the
sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit
down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually
up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had
not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl
down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as
he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving