H. Thicknesse, Plumber and Glazier. Repairs promptly attended to. The front garden was ambitiously planted with laurels, and the entire exterior of the house showed Mr. Thicknesse to be a man of enterprise. In the sunshine of an April day Kitchener Road seemed not so tawdry as she had expected, and then she suddenly realized that during the years that she had been away a subtle but incalculably real change had been taking place. Kitchener Road had been slowly and imperceptibly becoming respectable. There was a distinct cæsura where the respectability began: you could tell by the curtains in the windows, the condition of the front gardens, and the occasional tablet on the front gate: “No Hawkers; No Circulars; No Canvassers.” What precisely determined the position of the cæsura was not clear: maybe it was the licensed abattoir, or most probably the cæsura was constantly and uniformly shifting in a given direction. At any rate, the road was immeasurably loftier in the social scale than it had been when she and her parents had occupied No. 24. Turning into Duke Street, she discovered the Methodist Chapel under process of renovation: scaffolding was up round the walls and the railings in front were already a violent crimson. A notice declared that: During the redecorating of the Chapel, services, both morning and evening, will be held in the schoolroom. It was the schoolroom in which her father had given Band of Hope demonstrations and evenings with the poets; it was the schoolroom in which she had flung a tea-cup at the head of Freddie McKellar. Curiously vivid was the recollection of that early incident. If she had gone inside she could have identified the exact spot on the floor on which she stood to aim the missile.... One thing was plain: if Kitchener Road had risen in the social scale its rise had been more than compensated for by a downward movement on the part of Duke Street. Duke Street was, if such were possible, frowsier than ever. Many of the houses had converted their bay-window parlours into shops, and on the window-frame of one of these Catherine noticed the “Apartments” card. She wondered if she would ever have to live in a place like that. It was a greengrocer’s shop, and the gutter in front was clogged with cabbage leaves and the outer peelings of onions. The open front door showed a lobby devoid of floor covering, and walls scratched into great fissures of plaster. As she passed by a woman emerged from the shop, with a man’s cap adjusted with hat pins, and a dirty grey apron. In her hand she held a gaudily decorated jug, and Catherine saw her cross the road and enter the off-license belonging to the “Duke of Wellington.” § 2