e, Grace," cries Mona. "Mr Musgrave has just been bewailing
his fate, in that he is condemned to answer that question the same
number of times there are inhabitants of Doppersdorp, that is to say,
about four hundred. And now you are the four hundred and first. In
fact, he now answers before the question is asked, from sheer force of
habit."

"Ha, ha!" laughs Suffield. "Now you mention it, the thing must become a
first-class bore, especially as you're expected to answer every time
that you think it a paradise, on pain of making a lifelong enemy. Now,
for my part, I'd rather hang myself than have to live in Doppersdorp.
As a deadly lively, utterly insignificant hole, there can be few to beat
it among our most one-horse townships. And the best of the joke is that
its inhabitants think it about as important as London."

"Your verdict is refreshing, Suffield; nor does it inspire me with wild
surprise, unless by reason of its complete novelty," rejoins Roden.
"But, however true, I don't find its adoption for public use warranted
upon any ground of expediency."

"Where are you staying, Mr Musgrave?" asks Mona.

"At the Barkly, for the present. I went to it because it was the first
I came to, and I felt convinced there was no choice."

"Do they make you comfortable there?"

"H'm! Comfort, like most things in this world, is relative. Some
people might discover a high degree of comfort in being stabled in a
three-bedded room with a travelling showman, the proud proprietor of a
snore which is a cross between a prolonged railway whistle and the
discharge of a Gatling; and farther, who is given to anointing a profuse
endowment of ruddy locks with cosmetics, nauseous in odour and of sticky
consistency, and is not careful to distinguish between his own hair
brash and that of his neighbours. Some people, I repeat, might find
this state of things fairly comfortable. I can only say that my
philosophy does not attain to such heights."

"Rather not," says Suffield. "Jones is a decent fellow in his way, but
he's no more fit to run an hotel than I am to repair a church organ.
How do you find his table, Musgrave?"

"I find it simply deplorable. A medley of ancient bones, painted
yellow, and aqueous rice, may be _called_ curry, but it constitutes too
great an inroad upon one's stock of faith to accept it as such. Again,
that delectable dish, termed at The Barkly `head and feet,' seems to me
to consist of the refuse porti