like a ladder, and
came to the loft where the wool was stored. Hyacinth handled it as he
was directed, and endeavoured to appreciate the difference between the
good and the inferior qualities. They passed by an unglazed window at
the back of the mill, and Mr. Quinn pointed out his own house. It stood
among trees and shrubs, now for the most part bare, but giving promise
of shady privacy in summertime. Long windows opened out on to a lawn
stretching down to the watercourse which fed the millwheel. A gravel
path skirted one side of the house leading to a bridge, and thence to
a doorway in a high wall, beyond which lay the road. As they looked
the door opened, and a woman with two little girls came through. They
crossed the bridge, and walked up to the house.

'That is my wife,' said Mr. Quinn, 'and my two little girls.'

He stretched out between the bars of the window, and shouted to them.
All three looked back. Mrs. Quinn waved her hand, and the two children
shouted in reply. Then a light appeared in one of the windows, and
Hyacinth caught a glimpse of a trim maid-servant pulling the curtains
across it.

'We shall be having tea at half-past six,' said Mr. Quinn. 'Will you
come and join us? By the way, where are you staying?'

Hyacinth accepted the invitation, and confessed that he had not as yet
looked for any place to lay his head.

'Ah! Better go to the hotel for to-night. It's not much of a place,
but you will have to learn to put up with that sort of accommodation.
Tomorrow we'll try and find you some decent lodgings.'

The hotel struck even Hyacinth as of inferior quality, though it
boasted great things in the timetable advertisements, and called itself
'Imperial' in large gold letters above its door. A smell of whisky and
tobacco greeted him as he entered, and a waiter with a greasy coat, in
answer to inquiries about a bed, sent him down a dark passage to seek
a lady called Miss Sweeney at the bar. Large leather cases with broad
straps and waterproof-covered baskets blocked the passage, and Hyacinth
stumbled among them for some time before he discovered Miss Sweeney
reading a periodical called _Spicy Bits_ among her whisky-bottles.
She was a young woman of would-be fashionable appearance, and acted
apparently in the double capacity of barmaid and clerk. On hearing that
Hyacinth required, not whisky, but a bedroom, she requested him to go
forward to the office, indicating a glass case at the far end of the bar