Chapter 1

THE NEW-COMERS.

"If you please, mum," said the voice of a domestic
from somewhere round the angle of the door, "number three
is moving in.

Two little old ladies, who were sitting at either
side of a table, sprang to their feet with ejaculations
of interest, and rushed to the window of the
sitting-room.

"Take care, Monica dear," said one, shrouding herself
in the lace curtain; "don't let them see us.

"No, no, Bertha. We must not give them reason to say
that their neighbors are inquisitive. But I think that
we are safe if we stand like this."

The open window looked out upon a sloping lawn, well
trimmed and pleasant, with fuzzy rosebushes and a
star-shaped bed of sweet-william. It was bounded by
a low wooden fence, which screened it off from a broad,
modern, new metaled road. At the other side of this road
were three large detached deep-bodied villas with peaky
eaves and small wooden balconies, each standing in its
own little square of grass and of flowers. All three
were equally new, but numbers one and two were curtained
and sedate, with a human, sociable look to them; while
number three, with yawning door and unkempt garden, had
apparently only just received its furniture and made
itself ready for its occupants. A four-wheeler had
driven up to the gate, and it was at this that the old
ladies, peeping out bird-like from behind their curtains,
directed an eager and questioning gaze.

The cabman had descended, and the passengers within
were handing out the articles which they desired him to
carry up to the house. He stood red-faced and blinking,
with his crooked arms outstretched, while a male hand,
protruding from the window, kept piling up upon him a
series of articles the sight of which filled the curious
old ladies with bewilderment.

"My goodness me!" cried Monica, the smaller, the
drier, and the more wizened of the pair. "What do you
call that, Bertha? It looks to me like four batter
puddings."

"Those are what young men box each other with,"
said Bertha, with a conscious air of superior worldly
knowledge.

"And those?"

Two great bottle-shaped pieces of yellow shining wood
had been heaped upon the cabman.

"Oh, I don't know what those are," confessed Bertha.
Indian clubs had never before obtruded themselves upon
her peaceful and very feminine existence.

These mysterious articles were followed, however, by
others which were more within their, range of
comprehension--by a pair of dumb-bells, a purple
cricket-bag, a set of golf clubs, and a tennis racket.
Finally, when the cabman, all top-heavy and bristling,
had staggered off up the garden path, there emerged in a