to a baby; yet the more absurd a slander the more
eagerly it was believed, and a slander once started could never be
overtaken.

What on earth was George Peel doing in Bursley with that baby? Why had
he not announced his arrival? Where was the baby's mother? Where was
their luggage? Why, in the name of reason, had George vanished so
swiftly into the Tiger, and what in the name of decency and sobriety was
he doing in the Tiger such a prodigious time?

It occurred to him that possibly George had written to him and the
letter had miscarried.

But in that case, where had they slept the previous night? They could
not have come down from London that morning; it was too early.

Little Georgie persevered in the production of yells that might have
been heard as far as the Wesleyan Chapel, and certainly as far as the
Conservative Club.

Then Mr Duncalf, the Town Clerk, went by, from his private office,
towards the Town Hall, and saw the singular spectacle of the public man
and the perambulator. Mr Duncalf, too, was a bachelor.

"So you've come down to see 'em," said Mr Duncalf, gruffly, pretending
that the baby was not there.

"See whom?"

"Well, your niece and her husband, of course."

"Where are they?" asked Mr Peel, without having; sufficiently considered
the consequences of his question.

"Aren't they in the Tiger?" said Mr Duncalf. "They put up there
yesterday afternoon, anyhow. But naturally you know that."

He departed, nodding. The baby's extraordinary noise incommoded him and
seemed somehow to make him blush if he stood near it.

Mr Peel did not gasp. It is at least two centuries since men gasped from
astonishment. Nevertheless, Mr Duncalf with those careless words had
simply knocked the breath out of him. Never, never would he have
guessed, even in the wildest surmise, that Mary and her husband and
child would sleep at the Tiger! The thought unmanned him. What! A baby
at the Tiger!

Let it not be imagined for a moment that the Tiger is not an utterly
respectable hotel. It is, always was, always will be. Not the faintest
slur had ever been cast upon its licence. Still, it had a bar and a
barmaid, and indubitably people drank at the bar. When a prominent man
took to drink (as prominent men sometimes did), people would say, "He's
always nipping into the Tiger!" Or, "You'll see him at the Tiger before
eleven o'clock in the morning!" Hence to Samuel Peel, total abstainer
and temperance reformer, the Tiger, d