Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/58

 clothes, and accompanied by Anthony in a new turn-out from head to foot, she knocked at the door of the Misses Warmington's "select preparatory school."

It was one of a square of small, old-fashioned houses that had once been on the outskirts of Millsborough, but which now formed a connecting link between the old town and the maze of new mean streets that had crept towards it from the west. They were shown into the drawing-room. The portrait of a military gentleman with a wooden face and stars upon his breast hung above the marble mantelpiece. On the opposite wall, above the green rep sofa, hung a frightened-looking lady with ringlets and fingers that tapered almost to a point.

Mrs. Strong'nth'arm sat on the extreme edge of a horsehair-covered chair and had difficulty in not sliding off it on to the floor. Anthony John, perched on another precisely similar chair, had mastered the problem by sitting well back and tucking one leg underneath him.

After a few minutes there entered the elder Miss Warmington. She was a tall gaunt lady with a prominent arched nose. She apologized to Mrs. Strong'nth'arm for having kept them waiting, but apparently did not see Mrs. Strong'nth'arm's out-