lord, Mr. Honeyball, in a
tightly buttoned frock-coat and wide-awake hat, march with an erect
and military air to the end of the passage, dart a piercing glance in
either direction, and remain, hands behind back and shoulders squared,
taking the air. Which meant that Mrs. Honeyball was engaged in the
dark and dungeon-like kitchen below the worn flags of the archway,
preparing the coffee and bacon for Mr. Honeyball's breakfast.

Having washed and shaved--and here it may be set down, for the benefit
of Americans and others not skilled in metropolitan existence, that
when a building bears over its archway the date 1472 the bathing
arrangements within will not be of the most modern design--the author
then took his pipe, tobacco, and cane and prepared to descend the
winding stone stairway which ended in a door of heavy wood. This
contrivance opened directly upon the small triangular chamber where
Mrs. Honeyball each day laid the meals for herself and husband,
transacted her rent-collecting, and received occasional visitors
during late afternoon, self-effacing ladies of mature age who seemed
to shrink back into the panelling behind them and who assumed the
anxious immobility of figures in high relief, if the phrase may be
allowed to pass. At this early hour, however, no one is in sight save
Mrs. Honeyball herself, a slight elderly person with that look of
pink beatification on her face which accompanies some forms of
Christianity, emerging from another door which leads down a curved
stairway to subterranean regions. Mrs. Honeyball, it may be stated in
parenthesis, is of the great family of hero-worshippers, women who
are inspired with an indomitable and quite illogical faith in the
wisdom and strength of their gentlemen friends. The mere fact of the
author being a nautical character is sufficient for Mrs. Honeyball.
Beyond going as far as Margate on the _Clacton Belle_, a fat,
squab-shaped side-wheel affair very popular with London folk in that
era, Mrs. Honeyball's acquaintance with the sea is purely theoretical.
To her all sea-faring men are courageous, simple-hearted stalwarts
having their business in great waters, and she has intimated that she
always remembers them in her prayers. The modest breakfast, for two,
is spread on one side of the round table which is so much too large
for the room. She would be only too pleased if she could board me, but
it is not allowed. The Inn, I have been given to understand, has been
bou