e, smiling
like a Cheshire cat with pure delight, and saying: 'Annie, my dear,
you're an angel compacted of comfort and kindness: my love, would you
pass me a paper-light, _if_ you please?' But in the meantime the bird
must be caught. I go to catch it."

He slipped his dirty apron over his head, put on his coat and
weather-beaten hat of strange outlandish shape, placed the ring in a
dainty, silk-lined case, and sallied forth into the street.

Timber Town burst on his benignant gaze. Over against him stood a great
wooden shop, painted brilliant blue; along the street was another, of
bright red; but most of the buildings were a sober stone-colour or some
shade of modest grey or brown. One side of the street was verandah'd
along its whole length, and the walks on either side of the macadamised
road were asphalted. Benjamin, wearing the air of Bacchus courting the
morning, walked a hundred yards or so, till he came to the centre of the
town, where four streets met. At one corner stood the Kangaroo Bank; at
another a big clothing-shop; at the two others Timber Town's rival
hostelries--The Bushman's Tavern and The Lucky Digger. The Bank and
hotels, conspicuous amid the other buildings, had no verandahs in front
of them, but each was freshly painted; the Bushman's Tavern a
slate-blue, The Lucky Digger a duck-egg green.

The sun was hot; the iron on the roofs ticked in the heat and reflected
the rays of heaven. Benjamin paused on the edge of the pavement, mopped
his perspiring brow, and contemplated the garish scene. Opposite the
wooden Post Office, which flanked the "clothing emporium," stretched a
rank of the most outlandish vehicles that ever came within the category
of cabs licensed to carry passengers. Some were barouches which must
have been ancient when Victoria was crowned, and concerning which there
was a legend that they came out to the settlement in the first ships, in
1842; others were landaus, constructed on lines substantial enough to
resist collision with an armoured train; but the majority were built on
a strange American plan, with a canopy of dingy leather and a step
behind, so that the fare, after progressing sideways like a crab,
descended, at his journey's end, as does a burglar from "Black Maria."

Along the footpaths walked, in a leisurely manner, a goodly sprinkling
of Timber Town's citizens, with never a ragged figure among them.

Perhaps the seediest-looking citizen "on the block" was Tresco himsel