proceed to the agent's to inquire further. Hardly had they sat down to
tea when the landlady called. Her gentleman, she said, had been so
obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four weeks rather
than drive the new-comers away.

'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said the
Marchmills.

'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landlady
eloquently. 'You see, he's a different sort of young man from
most--dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be here
when the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the sea
washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place, than he does
now in the season. He'd just as soon be where, in fact, he's going
temporarily, to a little cottage on the Island opposite, for a change.'
She hoped therefore that they would come.

The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next day,
and it seemed to suit them very well. After luncheon Mr. Marchmill
strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having despatched the
children to their outdoor amusements on the sands, settled herself in
more completely, examining this and that article, and testing the
reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe door.

In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's, she
found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest. Shabby
books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in a queerly
reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant had not conceived
the possibility that any incoming person of the season's bringing could
care to look inside them. The landlady hovered on the threshold to