hall
be engaged in before the hour strikes."

III

Fergus Appleton thought he saw "the singing girl" of his voyage from
New York one May day in Wells, where he went to study the cathedral.
He noticed a hansom with a pink-clad figure in the opening, looking
like a rosebud of a new and odd sort on wheels. At least, it looked
like a rosebud at the moment the doors rolled back like the leaves of
a calyx, and the flower issued, triumphant and beautiful. She was
greeted by a tall, stout young lady, who climbed into the hansom, and
the two settled themselves quickly and drove off.

Appleton's hansom followed on its own course, which chanced to be in
the same direction, and he saw the slim and the stout disappear up a
hilly street, at the top of which was a famous old house. He walked
that way in the afternoon, having nothing better to do, but could
observe no dwelling at which the two ladies might be staying. There
was a pretty cottage with a long, graveled pathway leading to it, and
a little sign on the locked gate reading: "Spring Cleaning. Please do
not knock or ring." Farther along was a more pretentious house, so
attractive that he was sorry he had never noticed it before, for the
sign "Apartments to Let" was in one of the front windows. He heard a
piano in the rear somewhere, but on reaching the front door another
sign confronted him: "The parlor maid is slightly deaf. If doorbell is
not answered at once, please step inside and ring the dinner bell on
the hall table."

This somehow required more courage than Appleton possessed, though he
determined to look at the rooms on his next visit, so he stole down
the path and went about his business, wondering why in the world he
had done such a besotted thing as to take a walk among the furnished
lodgings of the cathedral town of Wells.

The summer waxed. He had nearly finished his book, and feeling the
need of some peaceful retreat where he could do the last chapters and
work up his sketches, he took the advice of an English friend and went
down to Devonshire, intending to go from place to place until he found
a hotel and surroundings to his mind.

The very first one pleased his exacting taste, and he felt that the
Bexley Sands Inn would be the very spot in which to write; comfortable
within, a trifle too large, perhaps, and at week-ends too full of
people, but clean, well-kept, and sunny.

It was a Friday evening, and the number of guests who arrived on the
last