The very stillness was gay with suspense, like a pretty woman's suppressed laughter glimmering in her eyes.
And into this tinted light, framed in palest blue and white, waddled Mortimer, appropriate as a June-bug scrambling in a Sevres teacup.
"Anybody here ?" he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny grand piano cased in unvarnished Circassian walnut.
"There is nobody at home, sir," said the maid.
"Music lesson over ?" "Yes, sir, at three." He began to ascend the stairway, breathing heavily, thud, thud over the deep velvet strip, his fat hand grasping the banister rail.
Somewhere on the second floor a small dog barked, and Mortimer traversed the ball and opened the door into a room hung with gold Spanish leather and pale green curtains.
"Hello, Tinto!" he said affably as a tiny Japanese spaniel hurled herself at him, barking furiously, then began writhing and weaving herself about him, gurgling recognition and welcome.
He sat down heavily in a padded easy-chair.

The spaniel sprang into his lap, wheezing, sniffling, goggling its protruding eyes.

Mortimer liked the dog, but he didn't like what the owner of the dog said about the resemblance between his own and Tinto's eyes.
"Get down!" he said; "you're shedding black and white hairs all over me." But the dog didn't want to get down, and Mortimer's good nature permitted her to curl up on his fat knees and sleep that nervous, twitching sleep peculiar to overpampered toy canines.
The southern sun was warm in the room; the windows open, but not a silken hanging stirred.
Presently another maid entered, with an apple cut into thin wafers and a decanter of port; and Mortimer lay back in his chair, sopping his apple in the thick, crimson wine, and feeding morsels of the combination to himself and to Tinto at intervals until the apple was all gone and the decanter three-fourths empty.
It was very still in the room--so still, that Mortimer, opening his eyes at longer and longer intervals to peer at the door, finally opened them no more.
The droning gurgle that he made kept Tinto awake.

When his lower jaw sagged, and he began to really show what snoring could be, Tinto, very nervous, got up and hopped down.
It was still daylight when Mortimer awoke, conscious of people about him.

As he opened his eyes, a man laughed; several people seated by the windows joined in.