It was, as has been said with reference to contemporary events at Carbery, sultry August weather, and if it was hot even on the spurs of breezy Dartmoor, assuredly it was hotter in the east of London. The strong sun brought out with great effect the combined perfumes of pitch and paint, of gas refuse and train-oil, of tide-mud and fried flat-fish, of old tarpaulins, rotten timber, and animal and vegetable refuse, never so pungent as beside the Thames. Society, gasping for air of purer quality than that town-made article which during the season and the parliamentary session it had respired perforce, had left London. But the captains who patronised Plugger’s bore the loss of Society with philosophical equanimity, and were content to incur, by stopping where they were, a reputation for being wholly unfashionable. A controversy might have been waged with reference to Old Plugger’s as to which was the back and which the front of that hospitable mansion. The main-door certainly opened on the street, or rather row, named in honour of Dampier, and by the position of a main-door that of a house-front is commonly to be determined. But then Plugger’s turned all its smiles, all its attractions towards the river. The best rooms were on that side, with their bow-windows and lumbering balconies; and there was even a narrow strip of garden, where snails ran riot among the neglected cabbages and tall sunflowers, and where the half of an old boat, set on end and festooned with sweet-pea and the inevitable scarlet-runner, did duty for an arbour, perilously near to the wash and ripple of the flood-tide.