"Like to look round the house?" said Miss Childe. "We've given up showing it since the Suffragettes, but if you could give me a reference——"

"Messrs. Salmon and Gluckstein," said I, "are my solicitors."

My lady pointed to a door at the end of the flagged passage in which we stood.

"That'll take you into the hall," she said. "I'll come and find you when I've seen the servants."

I saluted and broke away in the direction she had indicated.

There was a closet that opened out of the great gallery. No door hung in the doorway and I could see china ranged orderly against the panelling of the walls. I descended its two stairs, expecting to find it devoted to china and nothing else. But I was wrong. Facing the window and the sunshine was a facsimile of the tallboy chest which I had coveted so fiercely two hours before.

I gazed at it spell-bound.

"It's very rude to stare," said a voice.

I turned to see Miss Childe framed in the doorway.

Her gown was of apricot, with the bodice cut low and the skirt gathered in loops to show her white silk petticoat, which swelled from under a flowered stomacher so monstrously, that the tiny blue-heeled slipper upon the second stair seemed smaller than ever. Deep frills of lace fell from her short sleeves and a little lace cap was set on her thick dark hair.

I swallowed before replying. Then—

"It's a lovely chest," I said lamely.

"Picked wood," said Miss Childe. "Flogged once a week for years, that tree was."

"Flogged?"

"Certainly."

Suddenly the air was full of music, and a jubilant chorus of voices was singing lustily—

 "A woman, a spaniel, and a walnut-tree, The more you beat them, the better they be." 

As the melody faded—

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