CHAPTER XVI
MY PERSUASIVE MANNER
I went at once to the house in Arlington Street The door was Opened by Mr. Morley.
"Have you heard anything of Mr. Philip? Is he at home?"
Mr. Morley had opened the door about six inches, peeping through the crevice as if he expected to see some dreadful object on the doorstep. The sight of me seemed to reassure him. He addressed me in a sepulchral whisper.
"Would you mind stepping inside for a moment, sir?"
I went into a front room on the ground floor. Mr. Morley came in after me, and, behind him, Mrs. Morley. I was conscious that the room was filled with old oak furniture. It is, perhaps, because I am not a man of taste that I would not have an apartment in which I proposed to live filled with that funereal wood. Old black oak furniture reminds me of an African swamp. It is dark and sombre—heavy, stiff, ungainly.
Without, the shadows had deepened; in the
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