ory of human manners is
crunched and embedded in the very macadam of that part of the borough,
and the burgesses unheedingly tread it down every day and talk gloomily
about the ugly smoky prose of industrial manufacture. And yet the
Dragon Hotel, safely surviving all revolutions by the mighty virtue and
attraction of ale, stands before them to remind them of the
interestingness of existence.

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TWO.

At the southern corner of Trafalgar Road and Wedgwood Street, with Duck
Square facing it, the Dragon Hotel and Warm Lane to its right, and
Woodisun Bank creeping inconspicuously down to its left, stood a
three-storey building consisting of house and shop, the frontage being
in Wedgwood Street. Over the double-windowed shop was a discreet
signboard in gilt letters, "D. Clayhanger, Printer and Stationer," but
above the first floor was a later and much larger sign, with the single
word, "Steam-printing." All the brickwork of the facade was painted
yellow, and had obviously been painted yellow many times; the woodwork
of the plate-glass windows was a very dark green approaching black. The
upper windows were stumpy, almost square, some dirty and some clean and
curtained, with prominent sills and architraves. The line of the
projecting spouting at the base of the roof was slightly curved through
subsidence; at either end of the roof-ridge rose twin chimneys each with
three salmon-coloured chimney-pots. The gigantic word `Steam-printing'
could be seen from the windows of the Dragon, from the porch of the big
Wesleyan chapel higher up the slope, from the Conservative Club and the
playground at the top of the slope; and as for Duck Square itself, it
could see little else. The left-hand shop window was alluringly set out
with the lighter apparatus of writing and reading, and showed
incidentally several rosy pictures of ideal English maidens; that to the
right was grim and heavy with ledgers, inks, and variegated specimens of
steam-printing.

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THREE.

In the wedge-shaped doorway between the windows stood two men, one
middle-aged and one old, one bareheaded and the other with a beaver hat,
engaged in conversation. They were talking easily, pleasantly, with
free gestures, the younger looking down in deferential smiles at the
elder, and the elder looking up benignantly at the you