For a moment she was really too surprised to speak.  Putting the tray down on the table, she stooped and picked up the Book.  It troubled her that the Book should have fallen to the ground; but really she hadn’t been able to help it—­it was mercy that the tray hadn’t fallen, too.

Mr. Sleuth got up.  “I—­I have taken the liberty to arrange the room as I should wish it to be,” he said awkwardly.  “You see, Mrs.—­er—­Bunting, I felt as I sat here that these women’s eyes followed me about.  It was a most unpleasant sensation, and gave me quite an eerie feeling.”

The landlady was now laying a small tablecloth over half of the table.  She made no answer to her lodger’s remark, for the good reason that she did not know what to say.

Her silence seemed to distress Mr. Sleuth.  After what seemed a long pause, he spoke again.

“I prefer bare walls, Mrs. Bunting,” he spoke with some agitation.  “As a matter of fact, I have been used to seeing bare walls about me for a long time.”  And then, at last his landlady answered him, in a composed, soothing voice, which somehow did him good to hear.  “I quite understand, sir.  And when Bunting comes in he shall take the pictures all down.  We have plenty of space in our own rooms for them.”

“Thank you—­thank you very much.”

Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.

“And I have brought you up my Bible, sir.  I understood you wanted the loan of it?”

Mr. Sleuth stared at her as if dazed for a moment; and then, rousing himself, he said, “Yes, yes, I do.  There is no reading like the Book.  There is something there which suits every state of mind, aye, and of body too—­”

“Very true, sir.”  And then Mrs. Bunting, having laid out what really looked a very appetising little meal, turned round and quietly shut the door.

She went down straight into her sitting-room and waited there for Bunting, instead of going to the kitchen to clear up.  And as she did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had maided a dear old lady.

The old lady had a favourite nephew—­a bright, jolly young gentleman, who was learning to paint animals in Paris.  And one morning Mr. Algernon—­that was his rather peculiar Christian name—­had had the impudence to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings done by the famous Mr. Landseer!

Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if they had only occurred yesterday, and yet she had not thought of them for years.

It was quite early; she had come down—­for in those days maids weren’t thought so much of as they are now, and she slept with the upper housemaid, and it was the upper housemaid’s duty to be down very early—­and, there, in the dining-room, she had found Mr. Algernon engaged in turning each engraving to the wall!  Now, his aunt thought all the world of those pictures, and Ellen had felt quite concerned, for it doesn’t do for a young gentleman to put himself wrong with a kind aunt.