But dinner was not always.

“No, I’m afraid it’s all gone,” said Mother Gander. She was blocking the way at the foot of the stairs, where a painted hand under pendent stag-horns directed you upwards to the “Parlour”—“The Black Sheep” would have none of your new-fangled “Coffee Rooms”—and Will Flynt, sniffing up the odours of beer, sand, tobacco, gin, snuff, and tallow like an ambrosial air, felt a further elation in the thought of its being now a beckoning not a monitory hand: to ascend to those unexplored heights, mysteriously grand to the boy, seemed symbolic of his rise in life.

“But haven’t you got anything?” His face fell.

“Nothing fit to offer,” said the landlady.

“But I’m hungry—and I’ve got to wait here.”

“You’re not staying for the night?” she queried.

“I may,” he said, to encourage her to produce some food.

“Oh, but we haven’t a room empty.”

He reddened. Was it possible she recognized the hobnailed lad of yore, refused to serve him or to allow him up her aristocratic stairs?

“You haven’t a room empty?” he repeated incredulously.

“There’s a poky garret,” she said, “and another man would have to go through it to his bedroom, and he goes to bed very late and gets up very early. But even our best rooms are stuffy and our corridors are that dingy people are always tumbling against the brooms the maids leave about; when they’re not tumbling down the stairs. Look how steep they are! The whole house is badly built—it was never meant for an hotel—and the service is disgraceful.”

Will, overwhelmed, stammered out deprecation of her abuse. The inn was most picturesque, he urged, and it was not the fault of the house if the coach was late; as for himself a crust of bread and cheese would suffice to stay his pangs.

“Well, go up and see what you can get,” she rejoined sceptically, moving aside. Relieved to find the barrier raised, he ascended the dog-legged staircase; his boyish awe resurging. Alas! even the landlady’s disparagement had not prepared him for this dishevelled scene—dirty plates and greasy knives and forks and tobacco-stoppers and sloppy pewter pots that had stamped bleary rims on the fly-haunted table-cloth, and a waiter in his shirt-sleeves dining, like a gentleman, off the ruins.

“Wegetables and pastry is hoff!” murmured this disturbed gentleman.

Will was retreating—bread and cheese at the bar amid the glinting bottles and shining beer-handles seemed more appetizing—but the waiter had sprung up, his mouth still masticating but his coat conjured on, and had him fixed instanter on a Windsor chair at a clean little sun-splashed table by a side window that was refreshingly open and gave on the cheery courtyard.

A cut of the devastated joint, strong mustard pickles, a hunch of good bread, a pint of porter and the freedom of the cheese to follow, soon dispelled the dismalness of the room; an effect to which the attendant magician contributed more literally by his great trick of vanishing crumbs and disappearing plates, including his own half-eaten meal. How good it was, this cold roast beef of old England, how equally redolent of the dear old country those hunting pictures on the low wainscoted walls, with all their gay bravado. There were four of them: The Meet, Breaking Cover, Full Cry, The Death; all populous with spirited pink gentlemen and violently animated dogs and horses, culminating in the leading dog tearing the fox, and the leading gentleman waving his tall hat in rapture. He quaffed voluptuously at his frothing pewter pot. To the Queen of the May—ay, why not drink to her?

“How’s Mr. Gander?” he asked irrelevantly, with a sudden image of the bull-necked landlord and his massive gold scarfpin.

The waiter—on the point of disappearing—materialized himself again, and stared at the questioner.

“He ain’t anyhow,” he gasped at last. “At least that’s a secret ’twixt him and his Maker.”

“Dead?” It was Will’s turn to gasp. Could so much gross vitality be extinct, or even rarefied?

“Dead and married over. She’s Mrs. Mott now, though the old customers will keep on with the Mother Gander, just as I have to bite my tongue not to call her husband Charley.” He lowered his voice. “He was the potboy once.”

Will whistled. “What women are!” was in that knowing note. How pleasant it was thus to discuss—with beer and pickles!—life and death and the sex.

“Yes, sir—the potboy, and busting with pride if I let him hand up the plates at the Bowling Club dinner.” A sigh accented the cruel change. “You’ve been away, sir, I presoom.”

“Half round the world,” said Will with airy inaccuracy. “But why didn’t you go in for her?”

“Me! With my old woman! Besides I wasn’t going to turn Peculiar—no, not for ten ‘Black Sheep.’ You’ve heard o’ Peculiars, sir?”

“Ye-es.” A cayenne pod in the pickles made him cough.

“Thick as blackberries about these parts—and as full of texts as the bush of prickles.” The waiter’s voice sank again. “She made poor Charley into one of ’em. He’s got to go to chapel three times every Sunday and once on Wednesday.”

“Poor chap!” There was sympathy as well as mockery in Will’s tone. “But can you tell me”—he had a sudden remembrance—“why she runs down this place so? Is it her Peculiar conscience?”

“Ah! I’ve heard others arx that too. My opinion ain’t worth a woman’s tip, but I can’t help fancying it’s more defiance than conscience. Time was, you see, sir, folks kept away, and it sort o’ soured her. I don’t want your rotten custom, she as good as says to all and sundry. Take it to landladies who’ve arxed your permission to marry. And so they come all the more, sir, yes, and cringing to have rooms, and pays her whatever she asks. There was lots o’ grumbling in the old days: now you never hear a complaint, except from herself. My stars, the money she’s making! But I can’t say I envy Charley—not even when he bullies me. Although in marriage if it’s not one cross it’s another, ain’t it, sir? Or perhaps you’re one o’ the lucky ones.”

“I’m not married at all.”

“That’s what I mean.” And the waiter sighed again. “Got all you want, sir?”

“Everything, thank you—not wanting a wife.”

His laugh, gurgling away into his pewter pot, evoked only a deeper sigh, on which the waiter seemed wafted without.