the Manor to-night. I shall be awfully interested to hear what you
think of them. He has been looking up some things to talk about,
and I can tell you, you'll have a dose. Maud is frightened to
death.--Yours "Jack.

"P.S.--I advise you to begin COUNTING at once."


A little later, Miss Merry turned up, to ask Howard if he would
care to look round the house. "Mrs. Graves would like," she said,
"to show it you herself, but she is easily tired, and can't stand
about much." They went round together, and Howard was surprised to
find that it was not nearly as large a house as it looked. Much
space was agreeably wasted in corridors and passages, and there
were huge attics with great timbered supports, needed to sustain
the heavy stone tiling, which had never been converted into living
rooms. There was the hall, which took up a considerable part of one
side; out of this, towards the road, opened the little parlour
where he had breakfasted, and above it was a library full of books,
with its oriel overhanging the road, and two windows looking into
the garden. Then there was the big drawing-room. Upstairs there
were but a half a dozen bedrooms. The offices and the servants'
bedrooms were in the wing on the road. There was but little
furniture in the house. Mr. Graves had had a preference for large
bare rooms; and such furniture as there was, was all for use and
not for ornament, so that there was a refreshing lack of any
aesthetic pose about it. There were but few pictures, but most of
the rooms were panelled and needed no other ornament. There was a
refreshing sense of space everywhere, and Howard thought that he
had never seen a house he liked so well. Miss Merry chirped away,