He was now in London, but in an unfamiliar part of it, and he stood for some minutes gazing up and down the wide long street, with its hurrying crowds, and thronging vehicles, and endless shops, without getting one idea more from it than ever he had got out of Pitt Street or George Street, or any other street in Sydney. It mattered little to him where he should sleep that night. He had as yet formed no plans as to how he should act with respect to beginning the inquiries which were to give him back his life’s history. So he entered the bar of the “Green Dragon” and asked for a bedroom, with which he was at once accommodated. On descending the stairs he was encountered by a very polite waiter, who begged to receive his orders for refreshments. The house was a very old-established one, and the waiter, with a smile of concern, as though the necessity were a melancholy one that obliged him to suggest such obvious truths at that time of day, ventured to observe that the gentleman might travel the whole breadth and length of the United Kingdom without meeting with better wines and choicer cooking than were to be found at that inn. On the strength of this and a small appetite Holdsworth ordered supper, and was conducted to the coffee-room, where he seated himself, the only occupant of the dark bare apartment, at a table furnished with a mustard-pot large enough to have supplied a hospital with poultices, and amused himself as best he could with staring at some grisly, faded prints after Hogarth, and a map of London, to which several generations of flies had contributed squares, streets, and blind alleys nowhere to be found in the metropolis proper. Having eaten his supper, he was leaning back in his chair, with a half resolution in his mind to stroll forth into the streets for an hour, and see what suggestions his wanderings might obtain for him, when the waiter came up, and leaning confidentially upon the table, informed him that there was an “’Armonious Meeting going on in the public room at the bottom of the passage, and if the gentleman liked, the sperits he was pleased to horder could be served him there.” “Who are they?” asked Holdsworth. “All sorts, sir. The ’armony is done by some gents as lives in the neighbourhood, who look in every Wednesday night to drink and converse. The governor takes the chair, and every gent as is stoppin’ in the house is made welcome. I think you’ll be pleased, sir.” “This is dull enough, at all events,” said Holdsworth, looking around him. It was too early to go to bed, and he felt too tired to take his half-projected stroll. So, conceiving that a quarter of an hour’s inspection of the convivialists in the public room might cheer him up, he rose and followed the waiter down the passage.