ch
girdled the ancient gardens in High Street. From the dazzling glimpses
of white muslin under honeysuckle arbours, to the dusky forms that
swarmed like spawn in the alleys, the life of Dinwiddie loved, hated,
enjoyed, and suffered beneath him. And over this love and this hatred,
this enjoyment and this suffering, there presided--an outward and
visible sign of the triumph of industrialism--the imposing brick walls
of the new Treadwell tobacco factory.

A soft voice spoke in his ear, and turning, he looked into the face of
Mrs. Peachey, whom he had almost forgotten.

"You will find the sun warm in the afternoon, I am afraid," she
murmured, still with her manner of pleasantly humouring him which he
found later to be an unconscious expression of her half maternal,
wholly feminine attitude toward his sex.

"Oh, I daresay it will be all right," he responded. "I shall work so
hard that I shan't have time to bother about the weather."

Leaving the window, he gazed around the little room with an impulse of
curiosity. Who had lived here before him? A clerk? A travelling
salesman? Perhaps one of the numerous indigent gentlewomen that formed
so large and so important a part of the population of Dinwiddie? The
walls were smeared with a sickly blue wash, and in several places there
were the marks left from the pictures of the preceding lodger. An old
mahogany bureau, black with age and ill usage, stood crosswise in the
corner behind the door, and reflected in the dim mirror he saw his own
face looking back at him. A film of dust lay over everything in the
room, over the muddy blue of the walls, over the strip of discoloured
matting on the floor, over the few fine old pieces of furniture, fallen
now into abject degradation. The handsome French bed, placed
conveniently between door and window, stood naked to the eyes, with its
cheap husk mattress rolled half back, and its bare slats, of which the
two middle ones were tied together with rope, revealing conspicuously
its descent from elegance into squalor. As he saw it, the room was the
epitome of tragedy, yet in the centre of it, on one of the battered and
broken-legged Heppelwhite chairs, sat Mrs. Peachey, rosy, plump, and
pretty, regarding him with her slightly quizzical smile. "Yes, life, of
course, is sad if you stop to think about it," her smile seemed to
assure him; "but the main thing, after all, is to be happy in spite of
it."

"Do you wish to stay here to-night?" she as