Miss Bell was as charming to her land-lady as she was to everybody else, but Mrs.Jordan found a polite pleasantness that permitted no opportunity for expansion whatever more stimulating to the curiosity and irritating to the mind generally than the worst of bad manners would have been.

That was the reason she knocked three times when she brought up Miss Bell's breakfast.

At Mr.Ticke's door she wrapped once, and cursorily at that.

Mr.Ticke was as conversational as you please on all occasions, and besides, Mr.Ticke's door was usually half open.

The shroud of mystery in which Mrs.Jordan wrapped her "third floor front" grew more impenetrable as the days went by.