He rang the area bell quite idly, and went on talking to me with the easy end of a conversation which had never had any beginning.

The black glaring figure in the portico did not stir.

I almost thought it was really a statue.

In another moment the grey area was golden with gaslight as the basement door was opened suddenly and a small and decorous housemaid stood in it.
"Pray excuse me," said Rupert, in a voice which he contrived to make somehow or other at once affable and underbred, "but we thought perhaps that you might do something for the Waifs and Strays.

We don't expect--" "Not here," said the small servant, with the incomparable severity of the menial of the non-philanthropic, and slammed the door in our faces.
"Very sad, very sad--the indifference of these people," said the philanthropist with gravity, as we went together up the steps.