The Roll-Call | Page 7

it.
"May I smoke?" asked George.
"Please do. Please do," said Mr. Haim, who was smoking a cigarette
himself, with courteous hospitality. However, it was a match and not a
cigarette that he offered to George, who opened his own dandiacal case.
"I stayed rather late at the office to-night," said George, as he blew out
those great clouds with which young men demonstrate to the world that
the cigarette is actually lighted. And as Mr. Haim, who was accustomed
to the boastings of articled pupils, made no comment, George

proceeded, lolling on the settle and showing his socks: "You know, I
like Chelsea. I've always had a fancy for it." He was just about to
continue cosmopolitanly: "It's the only part of London that's like Paris.
The people in the King's Road," etc., when fortunately he remembered
that Mr. Haim must have overheard these remarks of Mr. Enwright, and
ceased, rather awkwardly. Whereupon Mr. Haim suggested that he
should see the house, and George said eagerly that he should like to see
the house.
"We've got one bedroom more than we want," Mr. Haim remarked as
he led George to the hall.
"Oh yes!" said George politely.
The hall had a small bracket-lamp, which Mr. Haim unhooked, and
then he opened a door opposite to the door of the room which they had
quitted.
"Now this is a bedroom," said he, holding the lamp high.
George was startled. A ground-floor bedroom would have been
unthinkable at Bedford Park. Still, in a flat.... Moreover, the idea had
piquancy. The bedroom was sparsely furnished. Instead of a wardrobe
it had a corner curtained off with cretonne.
"A good-sized room," said Mr. Haim.
"Very," said George. "Two windows, too, like the drawing-room."
Then they went upstairs to the first floor, and saw two more bedrooms,
each with two windows. One of them was Miss Haim's; there was a hat
hung on the looking-glass, and a table with a few books on it. They did
not go to the second floor. The staircase to the second floor was
boarded up at the point where it turned.
"That's all there is," said Mr. Haim on the landing. "The studio people
have the second floor, but they don't use my front door." He spoke the
last words rather defiantly.

"I see," said George untruthfully, for he was mystified. But the mystery
did not trouble him.
There was no bathroom, and this did not trouble him either, though at
Bedford Park he could never have seriously considered a house without
a bathroom.
"You could have your choice of ground floor or first floor," said Mr.
Haim confidentially, still on the landing. He moved the lamp about, and
the shadows moved accordingly on the stairs.
"Oh, I don't mind in the least," George answered. "Whichever would
suit you best."
"We could give you breakfast, and use of sitting-room," Mr. Haim
proceeded in a low tone. "But no other meals."
"That would be all right," said George cheerfully. "I often dine in town.
Like that I can get in a bit of extra work at the office, you see."
"Except on Sundays," Mr. Haim corrected himself. "You'd want your
meals on Sundays, of course. But I expect you're out a good deal, what
with one thing or another."
"Oh, I am!" George concurred.
The place was perfect, and he was determined to establish himself in it.
Nothing could baulk him. A hitch would have desolated him
completely.
"I may as well show you the basement while I'm about it," said Mr.
Haim.
"Do!" said George ardently.
They descended. The host was very dignified, as invariably at the office,
and his accent never lapsed from the absolute correctness of an
educated Londoner. His deportment gave distinction and safety even to
the precipitous and mean basement stairs, which were of stone worn as

by the knees of pilgrims in a crypt. All kinds of irregular pipes ran
about along the ceiling of the basement; some were covered by ancient
layers of wall-paper and some were not; some were painted yellow, and
some were painted grey, and some were not painted. Mr. Haim
exhibited first the kitchen. George saw a morsel of red amber behind
black bars, a white deal table and a black cat crouched on a corner of
the table, a chair, and a tea-cloth drying over the back thereof. He liked
the scene; it reminded him of the Five Towns, and showed
reassuringly--if he needed reassurance, which he did not--that all
houses are the same at heart. Then Mr. Haim, flashing a lamp-ray on
the coal-hole and the area door as he turned, crossed the stone passage
into the other basement room.
"This is our second sitting-room," said Mr. Haim, entering.
There she was at work, rapt, exactly as George had