and fog. His palate, too, was receiving an education. Probably he
had never eaten of a joint rightly cooked, or tasted a potato boiled as
it should be; more often than not, the food set before him had undergone
a process which left it masticable indeed, but void of savour and
nourishment. Many little attentions of which he had never dreamed kept
him in a wondering cheerfulness. And at length he said to himself: 'Here
I shall stay.'

Not that his constant removals had been solely due to discomfort and a
hope of better things. The secret--perhaps not entirely revealed even to
himself--lay in Mr. Jordan's sense of his own importance, and his
uneasiness whenever he felt that, in the eyes of a landlady, he was
becoming a mere everyday person--an ordinary lodger. No sooner did he
detect a sign of this than he made up his mind to move. It gave him the
keenest pleasure of which he was capable when, on abruptly announcing
his immediate departure, he perceived the landlady's profound
mortification. To make the blow heavier he had even resorted to
artifice, seeming to express a most lively contentment during the very
days when he had decided to leave and was asking himself where he should
next abide. One of his delights was to return to a house which he had
quitted years ago, to behold the excitement and bustle occasioned by his
appearance, and play the good-natured autocrat over grovelling
dependents. In every case, save the two already mentioned, he had parted
with his landlady on terms of friendliness, never vouchsafing a reason
for his going away, genially eluding every attempt to obtain an
explanation, and at the last abounding in graceful recognition of all
that had been done for him. Mr. Jordan shrank from dispute, hated every
sort of contention; this characteristic gave a certain refinement to his
otherwise commonplace existence. Vulgar vanity would have displayed
itself in precisely the acts and words from which his self-esteem
nervously shrank. And of late he had been thinking over the list of
landladies, with a half-formed desire to settle down, to make himself a
permanent home. Doubtless as a result of this state of mind, he betook
himself to a strange house, where, as from neutral ground, he might
reflect upon the lodgings he knew, and judge between their merits. He
could not foresee what awaited him under Mrs. Elderfield's roof; the
event impressed him as providential; he felt, with singular emotion,
that choice was