There were but twelve of us who daily frequented it; and we might almost have belonged to the Trappist Order for all the conversation that was heard. Never have I been at such quiet _table d'hôtes_ as those that took place there. The company consisted of an old man and his wife, who kept their table napkins in a flowery chintz case which the man never could tackle, but left to the woman's skill to manipulate each evening. Both seemed to think laughter was most wrong and improper in public. A consumptive, very shy young man who had to have a hot bottle for his feet; a consumptive older man whose continual cough approached sometimes, during the courses, to the very verge of something else, and who passed his handkerchief from time to time to his mother for inspection; a very bent and solitary man by the door who had "shallow" hair growing off his temples, deeply sunken eyes, black moustache and receding chin, and who had the air of a conspirator, and a few other uninteresting couples. The _menu_ was delightfully worded sometimes. Such items as "Veal beaten with carrots," "Daubed green sauce," "Brains in butter," proved no more attractive to the palate than they were to the eye. But, apart from these delicacies, the fare was exceedingly appetising; oysters, as common as sparrows, played always a large part, (the charge per dozen, 1½ d.) Then, the last thing at night, our cheerful, bright-faced chambermaid used to bring us the most delicious iced milk. There was a curious, but so far as we could see un-enforced, regulation hung up in the _salle-à-manger_, to the effect that if one was late for _table d'hôte_ one would be punished by a fine of fifty centimes. The evenings we usually spent in our bedroom; it being the off-season there was practically nowhere else to go to. But it was cosy enough up there, with our pine log fire blazing up the chimney, its brown streams of liquid resin running down the surface of the wood, alight, and dripping from time to time in dazzling splashes on to the tiles below. The only drawback to our comfort--and it was a drawback--was that the young man who had such unpleasant coughs and upheavals during _table d'hôte_ paced restlessly and creakily up and down overhead continuously, both in the evening as well as in the early morning, and was, to judge by the sounds, always trying the effects of his bedroom furniture in different parts of the room, and generally altering its geography. He had quite as pronounced a craze for patrolling as had John Gabriel Borkman.