e taken a liking to you,
and I won't let you go to Miserrimus Dexter by yourself. Put on your
bonnet!"

"Now?" I asked.

"Certainly! My carriage is at the door. And the sooner it's over the
better I shall be pleased. Get ready--and be quick about it!"

I required no second bidding. In ten minutes more we were on our way to
Miserrimus Dexter.

Such was the result of my mother-in-law's visit!

CHAPTER XXIV. MISERRIMUS DEXTER--FIRST VIEW.

WE had dawdled over our luncheon before Mrs. Macallan arrived at
Benjamin's cottage. The ensuing conversation between the old lady and
myself (of which I have only presented a brief abstract) lasted until
quite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting in heavy clouds when we
got into the carriage, and the autumn twilight began to fall around us
while we were still on the road.

The direction in which we drove took us (as well as I could judge)
toward the great northern suburb of London.

For more than an hour the carriage threaded its way through a dingy
brick labyrinth of streets, growing smaller and smaller and dirtier and
dirtier the further we went. Emerging from the labyrinth, I noticed in
the gathering darkness dreary patches of waste ground which seemed to
be neither town nor country. Crossing these, we passed some forlorn
outlying groups of houses with dim little scattered shops among them,
looking like lost country villages wandering on the way to London,
disfigured and smoke-dried already by their journey. Darker and darker
and drearier and drearier the prospect drew, until the carriage stopped
at last, and Mrs. Macallan announced, in her sharply satirical way,
that we had reached the end of our journey. "Prince Dexter's Palace, my
dear," she said. "What do you think of it?"

I looked around me, not knowing what to think of it, if the truth must
be told.

We had got out of the carriage, and we were standing on a rough
half-made gravel-path. Right and left of me, in the dim light, I saw
the half-completed foundations of new houses in their first stage of
existence. Boards and bricks were scattered about us. At places gaunt
scaffolding poles rose like the branchless trees of the brick desert.
Behind us, on the other side of the high-road, stretched another plot
of waste ground, as yet not built on. Over the surface of this second
desert the ghostly white figures of vagrant ducks gleamed at intervals
in the mystic light. In front of us, at a distance of two hund