Excerpt

A roomy, comfortable, old-fashioned house in Bayswater, with high windows, big rooms, and little balconies just big enough to hold a wealth of flowers in summer and a very pretty show of evergreens when the season for flowers was past. On October a row of asters, backed up by a taller row of foliage plants, made the house look bright and pretty, and the young faces that appeared at the windows of the drawing-room made it prettier still. Mr. and Mrs. Aldington, the occupiers of the house, thought that there was nothing pleasanter in life than the gayety of young people, and so, as they had only two children, a son and a daughter, both grown up, they gave a general invitation to the younger generation, of which, particularly on a Sunday afternoon and evening, the contemporaries of their son and daughter were not slow to avail themselves.