, brick building set in grounds that
seemed freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that
would have frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without
the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating that no
application for admission, with or without permits, would be
honoured upon any day save Thursday. This was Tuesday.

Presently, the chains having fallen within after a feudal rattling,
an old man who looked born to the business of snapping up a
drawbridge in lieu of a taste for any other exclusiveness peered at
St. George through absurd smoked glasses, cracked quite across so
that his eyes resembled buckles.

"Good morning," said St. George; "has the Readers' Guild arrived
yet?"

The old man grated out an assent and swung open the door, which
creaked in the pitch of his voice. The bare hall was cut by a wall
of steel bars whose gate was padlocked, and outside this wall the
door to the warden's office stood open. St. George saw that a
meeting was in progress there, and the sight disturbed him. Then the
click of a key caught his attention, and he turned to find the old
man quietly and surprisingly swinging open the door of steel bars.

"This way, sir," he said hoarsely, fixing St. George with his buckle
eyes, and shambled through the door after him locking it behind
them.

If St. George had found awaiting him a gold throne encircled by
kneeling elephants he could have been no more amazed. Not a word had
been said about the purpose of his visit, and not a word to the
warden; there was simply this miraculous opening of the barred door.
St. George breathlessly footed across the rotunda and down the dim
opposite hall. There was a mistake, that was evident; but for the
moment St. George was going to propose no reform. Their steps echoed
in the empty corridor that extended the entire length of the great
building in an odour of unspeakable soap and superior disinfectants;
and it was not until they reached a stair at the far end that the
old man halted.

"Top o' the steps," he hoarsely volunteered, blinking his little
buckle eyes, "first door to the left. My back's bad. I won't go up."

St. George, inhumanely blessing the circumstance, slipped something
in the old man's hand and sprang up the stairs.

The first door at the left stood ajar. St. George looked in and saw
a circle of bonnets and white curls clouded around the edge of the
room, like witnesses. The Readers' Guild was about leaving; almos