"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a cab, and it won't matter."
She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words "second-floor," and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried, "Come in," and we entered.
Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale's room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:
"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all I have got."
"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses," I ventured to say.
"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."