“Quite!” murmured Soames.  Smither was getting garrulous!  “I just want to look round and see if there’s anything to be done.”

“Yes, sir.  I don’t think there’s anything except a smell of mice in the dining-room that we don’t know how to get rid of.  It’s funny they should be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy took to not coming down, just before the War.  But they’re nasty little things; you never know where they’ll take you next.”

“Does he leave his bed?”—­

“Oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the window in the morning, not to risk a change of air.  And he’s quite comfortable in himself; has his Will out every day regular.  It’s a great consolation to him—­that.”

“Well, Smither, I want to see him, if I can; in case he has anything to say to me.”

Smither coloured up above her corsets.

“It will be an occasion!” she said.  “Shall I take you round the house, sir, while I send Cook to break it to him?”

“No, you go to him,” said Soames.  “I can go round the house by myself.”

One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames felt that he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so saturated with the past.  When Smither, creaking with excitement, had left him, Soames entered the dining-room and sniffed.  In his opinion it wasn’t mice, but incipient wood-rot, and he examined the panelling.  Whether it was worth a coat of paint, at Timothy’s age, he was not sure.  The room had always been the most modern in the house; and only a faint smile curled Soames’ lips and nostrils.  Walls of a rich green surmounted the oak dado; a heavy metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling divided by imitation beams.  The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a bargain, one day at Jobson’s sixty years ago—­three Snyder “still lifes,” two faintly coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather charming, which bore the initials “J.  R.”—­Timothy had always believed they might turn out to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired them, had discovered that they were only John Robinson; and a doubtful Morland of a white pony being shod.  Deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small, such was an apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or body since he was four years old.  He looked especially at the two drawings, and thought:  ’I shall buy those at the sale.’

From the dining-room he passed into Timothy’s study.  He did not remember ever having been in that room.  It was lined from floor to ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity.  One wall seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy’s firm had published two generations back-sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book.  Soames read their titles and shuddered.  The middle wall had precisely the same books as used to