Pray step in.
This is my own little sanctum, and furnished after my own heart."
If Robert expected to see some fresh exhibition of wealth and luxury he
was woefully disappointed, for he found himself in a large but bare
room, with a little iron truckle-bed in one corner, a few scattered
wooden chairs, a dingy carpet, and a large table heaped with books,
bottles, papers, and all the other _debris_ which collect around a busy
and untidy man. Motioning his visitor into a chair, Raffles Haw pulled
off his coat, and, turning up the sleeves of his coarse flannel
shirt, he began to plunge and scrub in the warm water which flowed from
a tap in the wall.
"You see how simple my own tastes are," he remarked, as he mopped his
dripping face and hair with the towel. "This is the only room in my
great house where I find myself in a congenial atmosphere. It is homely
to me. I can read here and smoke my pipe in peace. Anything like
luxury is abhorrent to me."
"Really, I should not have though it," observed Robert.
"It is a fact, I assure you. You see, even with your views as to the
worthlessness of wealth, views which, I am sure, are very sensible and
much to your credit, you must allow that if a man should happen to be
the possessor of vast--well, let us say of considerable--sums of money,
it is his duty to get that money into circulation, so that the community
may be the better for it.
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