of their own, from their exquisite neatness and cheerful simplicity. The
chintz draperies were lively with gay flowers; books filled up the
niches; here and there were small pictures, chiefly sea-pieces,--well
chosen, well placed.

There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate in a certain
inexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of detail that seemed
actually brilliant, had not the folding-doors allowed a glimpse of a
plainer apartment, with fencing-foils and boxing-gloves ranged on the
wall, and a cricket-bat resting carelessly in the corner. These gave a
redeeming air of manliness to the rooms; but it was the manliness of a
boy,--half-girl, if you please, in the purity of thought that pervaded
one room, all boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in the
other. Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck had never
been admitted to the sight of anything half so fine. He stood at the
door for a moment, and stared about him, bewildered and dazzled. But his
natural torpor to things that concerned him not soon brought to him the
same stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the first
surprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerly
from the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops of
Chesterfield Gardens,--

"Well, well?" said Percival.

"Hold Brompton," said Beck, with a brevity of word and clearness of
perception worthy a Spartan.

"Old Brompton?" repeated Percival, thinking the reply the most natural in
the world.