《两个魔法：螺丝在拧紧，覆盖结尾》

The place he had left was high and square, brown and grey, flagged beneath and timbered above; a single survey of it was a perception of long and lucky continuities. It would have been difficult to find elsewhere anything at once so old and so actual, anything that had plainly come so far down without at any moment losing its way. There was such resignation in its long survival and yet such bravery in its high polish. If it had never been spoiled, this was partly because it had been for a century given up; but what it had been given up to was, after all, homely and familiar use. It had much of the chill of fallen fortunes, but there was no concession in its humility and no hypocrisy in its welcome. A dozen dark old portraits held up their heads to assure all comers that a tone or two was all that was missing; the roof was rich and firm, almost with the dignity of the vault of a church. On this Saturday afternoon in August, a hot still day, such of the casements as freely worked in the discoloured glass stood open to a terrace that overlooked a park, and to a wonderful old empty court that communicated with a wonderful old empty garden.

Chivers, considerably shrunken and completely silvered, was the very image of immemorial domesticity; you could not have told his age or named his use. He had been twenty years in the black dress-coat which must once have been the newest thing in the house and into which his years appeared to have declined as a shrunken family moves into a part of its habitation. This was completed by a white necktie he had himself done up this morning in honour of the day. His humility and his oddity were alike brought out by his juxtaposition with the gentleman he had admitted.

To admit Mr. Prodmore was anywhere and at any time an immense admission. He was a personage of great presence and weight, with a large smooth face in which a small sharp meaning was planted like a single pin in the tight red toilet-cushion of a guest-chamber. He wore a blue frock-coat, a stiff white waistcoat, and a high white hat which he kept on his head with a kind of protesting cock, while in his buttonhole nestled a bold prize plant on which he occasionally lowered a proprietary eye. The old portraits took him in with a sterner stare; a visitor more sensitive would have read a consciousness of his remaining in their presence so jauntily, so vulgarly covered. Mr. Prodmore had never a glance for them, and it would have been easy to see that this was an old story. “No one here?” he indignantly demanded from the very threshold. “I’m sorry to say no one has come, sir,” Chivers replied, “but I’ve had a telegram from Captain Yule.” Mr. Prodmore’s apprehension flared. “Not to say he ain’t coming?” “He was to take the 2.20 from Paddington; he certainly should be here!”