eyes as we went through, Mr. Chiffinch preceding me with an apology.

At the door on the landing of the first floor he turned to me again
before he knocked.

"His Majesty will be within the second room," he said. "Will you wait,
Mr. Mallock, please, in this first anteroom, and I will go through. This
is a private reception by His Majesty. There will be no formalities."

He tapped upon both the doors that were one inside the other; and then
led me through. The first chamber was very richly furnished, though
barely. There was a long table with chairs about it; and he led me to
one of these. Then with a nod or two he passed on to a second door,
tapped upon it softly and went through, closing it behind him. I heard a
woman's laugh as he went through, suddenly broken off.

There was, I supposed (and as I learned afterwards to be the case) one
other way at least out of the King's lodgings, through his private
library, where he kept all his clocks and wheels and such-like; for
when, after a minute or two, the door opened again and Mr. Chiffinch
beckoned me in, there was no woman with the King.

It was a great room--His Majesty's closet as it was called--which he
used for such solitary life as he led; and while I was with him, and
afterwards upon other occasions, I saw little by little how it was
furnished. The table in the midst, at which His Majesty wrote, was all
in disorder; it was piled high with papers and books, for he would do
what writing or reading he cared to do by fits and starts. The walls
were hung with panels of tapestry, and tall curtains of brocade hung at
the windows. Between the panels were pictures hung upon the walls--three