Howell still sells Mrs. Roberts her pennyworth of bicarbonate of soda, and with the same smile as ever, but he could do without her custom now. Look round. Crates of eggs (the Trwyn hens can't keep pace with the demand now), great Elizabethan gables of tinned fruits and salmon, a newspaper counter, the Post Office behind the wire grating there, strings of things hanging from the ceiling, scarcely an inch of Edward Garden's matchboarding to be seen, and three assistants, all busily weighing, packing, checking, snipping the string off on the little knives on the wooden string-boxes, and passing the parcels to the boys with the hand-carts. But we ought to have been here a couple of hours ago. Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Lacey and Mrs. Garden were giving their orders for the day then. They come every morning, rings on their fingers and bells on their toes, high heels and flounced parasols and all the lot, and Howell doesn't have it all his own way then, I can tell you. For this is where our ladies are really efficient. They may never dream of travelling otherwise than first-class, but they know the price of everything to a halfpenny and a farthing. There's no "If 'twill do 'twill do" about them when it comes to the management of a house. And when Hilda Morrell grows out of the stage of wishing her father would talk "like other people," the chances are that she'll discover too that this is her real strength, as it was her mother's. Mrs. Maynard comes in with them of a morning sometimes, and tells them how tre-_men_-dously clever she thinks them, to know the differences between things like that, and vows that _her_ tradesmen rob her right and left because she hasn't been properly brought up; and then Mrs. Briggs, putting down the egg she is holding to the light, cries, "Eh, it's nothing, love--I could learn you in a month!" But Mrs. Lacey detects a secret sarcasm in the phrase about the bringing-up. And the men will be in for their newspapers presently. Now a stroll to the hotel, and just a peep at them by and by as they have lunch.... * * * * * This is the hotel lounge. The varnish is quite dry, though it doesn't look it. A dozen little round tables, chairs heavily upholstered in crimson velvet, festoons of heavy gilt cord on the curtains, and that's the service-hatch in the corner. The waiters are rather melancholy; you see, it isn't a public-house; everything goes down on the residents' bills; and that means fewer tips. Tea is served here in the afternoon, but of course the ladies never dream of tipping. Those excellent purchasers work out everything at cost price, omit such items as interest on capital, insurance, depreciation, and so on, and find a shilling for two pennyworth of bread and butter, a twopenny cake, and a pinch of two-shilling tea with hot water thrown in, tip enough. "_Ting! Ting! Ting!_"