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the piano is a dessert dish heaped with fruit and sweets, mostly

chocolates

The middle of the room is clear Besides the easy chair, the piano

bench, and two chairs at the phonograph table, there is one stray

chair It stands near the fireplace On the walls, engravings; s

Pickering is seated at the table, putting down soins is standing up near hi out He appears in

thesort of man of forty

or thereabouts, dressed in a professional-looking black frock-coat with

a white linen collar and black silk tie He is of the energetic,

scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that

can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about his He is, in fact, but for his

years and size, rather like a very ierly and loudly, and requiring al to keep hienial bullying when

he is in a good hu; but

he is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likeable

even in his least reasonable moments