Mr Verneede first made straight for his lodgings. He inhabited a top-floor back in Maple Street, a little street leading out of the King's Road. Here he blacked his boots, put bear's grease on his hair, and assumed a frock-coat a shade more respectable than the one he usually wore. Then, with his coat tightly buttoned, his best hat on his head, and his umbrella under his arm, he made off on his errand revolving in his wonderful mind the forthcoming interview. To assist thought, he turned into the four-ale bar of the "Spotted Dog." Here stood a woman with a baby in her arms, a regular customer, who was explaining domestic troubles to the sympathetic barmaid. Seeing Verneede seated with his ale before him, she included him in her audience. Half an hour later the old gentleman, having given much advice on the rearing of babies and management of husbands, emerged from the "Spotted Dog" slightly flushed and entirely happy. It seemed so much pleasanter and cooler to enter a public house than an omnibus, that the "King's Arms," where the omnibuses stood, swallowed him easily. Here an anarchistical house-painter, who was destructing the British Empire, included him in his remarks; and it was, somehow, nearly five o'clock before he left the "King's Arms" more flushed and most entirely happy, and took an omnibus for Hammersmith. At nine o'clock he was wandering about Hammersmith asking people to direct him to "The Hollies" in James' Road; at eleven he was criticising the London County Council in a bar-room somewhere in Shepherd's Bush, but it might have been in Paris or Berlin, Vienna or Madrid, for all _he_ knew or cared. CHAPTER VI A SURPRISE VISIT Verneede having departed on his mission, Leavesley resumed his work with a feeling of relief. He had done something. There is nothing that strains the mind so much as sitting waiting with hands folded, so to speak, doing nothing. When Noah closed the trap-door of the Ark having let forth the dove, he no doubt followed its flight with his mind's eye--here flitting over wastes of water, here perched on the island he desired. Even so Leavesley, as he worked, followed the flight of Verneede towards the object of his desires. Leavesley was one of those unhappy people who meet their pleasures and their troubles half-way. He was an imaginative man, moving in a most unimaginative world, and as a result he was always knocking his nose against the concrete. Needless to say, his forecasts were nearly always wrong. If he opened a letter thinking it contained a bill, it, ten to one, enclosed a theatre ticket or a cheque, and if he expected a cheque, fifty to one he received a bill. This temperament, however, sometimes has its advantages, for he was sitting now quite contentedly painting and getting on with his picture, whilst Mr Verneede was sitting quite contentedly in the bar of the "Spotted Dog."