CHAPTER V.
NANCY ROSS I Mr.Munty Ross's house was certainly the smartest in March Square; No.
14, where the Duchess of Crole lived, was shabby in comparison.

Very often you may see a line of motor-cars and carriages stretching down the Square, then round the corner into Lent Street, and you may know then--as, indeed, all the Square did know and most carefully observed--that Mrs.Munty Boss was giving another of her smart little parties.

That dark-green door, that neat overhanging balcony, those rows--in the summer months--of scarlet geraniums, that roll of carpet that ran, many times a week, from the door over the pavement to the very foot of the waiting vehicle--these things were Mrs.Munty Ross's.
Munty Ross--a silent, ugly, black little man--had had made his money in potted shrimps, or something equally compact and indigestible, and it really was very nice to think that anything in time could blossom out into beauty as striking as Mrs.Munty's lovely dresses, or melody as wonderful as the voice of M.Radiziwill, the famous tenor, whom she often "turned on" at her little evening parties.

Upon Mr.Munty alone the shrimps seemed to have made no effect.

He was as black, as insignificant, as ugly as ever he had been in the days before he knew of a shrimp's possibilities.