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"I really cannot congratulate you on your management of these affairs," he said severely to Captain Boyson, as they stood at last, breathless and hustled, on the first-floor landing. "It is most improper, I may say dangerous, to admit such a number at once. And, as for seeing the house, it is simply impossible. I shall make my way down as soon as possible, and go for a walk."

Clement Austin had his wish; for the kind-hearted widow grew every day more and more attached to Margaret Wilmot. She discovered that the girl had more than an ordinary talent for music; and she proposed that Margaret should take a prettily furnished first-floor in a pleasant-looking detached house, half cottage, half villa, at Clapham, and at once set to work as a teacher of the piano.

Then made his way to the side with its deep, first-floor veranda and was creeping toward the front when he ran into something a circular construction covered with a rough bark and topped by a balustrade. One look at it and he gave a smothered exclamation and ran back among the trees. The light was almost gone, but there was enough to show a line of enormous shafts towering into a remote blackness.

His Majesty's revenues are seldom collected in this happy valley; the rents are dubious; and the water communication is very frequently cut off. Mr. Bob Sawyer embellished one side of the fire, in his first-floor front, early on the evening for which he had invited Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Ben Allen the other. The preparations for the reception of visitors appeared to be completed.

The porter at the foot told me to shut my jaw, which sounded as if my make-up was adequate. At first I thought there was nobody in the street. Then I caught sight of a policeman a hundred yards down, and a loafer shuffling past on the other side. Some impulse made me raise my eyes to the house opposite, and there at a first-floor window was a face.

"First-floor front," sobbed the girl. "Mrs. Schwarz." "Don't wait for me," said the minister to Hal. "In fact you'd better leave the place. Good-day." Thus abruptly discarded from consideration, Hal turned to the fugitive. "Is some one dead?" "Not yet." "Dying, then?" "As good as. It's the Death," said the girl with a strong shudder. "You said that before. What do you mean by the Death?"

In a moment the first-floor window was raised the little house was of the same pattern as her own and Grodman's full fleshy face loomed through the fog in sleepy irritation from under a nightcap. Despite its scowl the ex-detective's face dawned upon her like the sun upon an occupant of the haunted chamber. "What in the devil's the matter?" he growled.

These fellows that go up in balloons which they fit up like first-floor rooms, and take everything with them except a feather bed, don't know anything about it. They go fumbling around with a few pounds of ballast, and when they get into a wrong current there they stick. Now, between you and me, Mr. Smith, I don't mind telling you my secret of successful ballooning.

The house pleased him, and he considered Hyacinthe the more desirable for her substantial environment. He rang at a first-floor apartment. A maid led him through a long hall into a sitting-room. He noticed, at a glance, that nothing had changed since his last visit. It was the same vast, high-ceilinged room with windows reaching to heaven.

I had come home early from my club it was a sort of holiday-time with me just then for a few weeks intending to get some letters written which had been on my mind for some days, and I had sauntered into the library, a pleasant, fair-sized room lined with books, on the first-floor.