So having paid the tailor, I bade him good afternoon and strode forth into the street and, though a little conscious of my new clothes and somewhat hampered by the bulbous parcel beneath my arm, felt myself no longer in danger of being roared at to hold horses or proffered alms by kindly old ladies. I strolled along at leisurely pace, casting oblique and surreptitious glances at my reflection in shop windows, whereby I observed that my new garments fitted me better than I had supposed, though it seemed the hair curled beneath my hat brim in too generous luxuriance; so perceiving a barber's adjacent, I entered and gave my head to the ministrations of a chatty soul whose tongue wagged faster than his snipping scissors. Shorn of my superabundant locks, I sallied forth, and chancing upon a jeweller's shop, I entered and purchased a silver watch for the Tinker, another for Jessamy Todd, and lastly a gold locket and chain for Diana. CHAPTER XXIX TELLS OF AN OMINOUS MEETING Precisely upon the stroke of half-past four I turned under the arch of the "Chequers" inn and, coming into the yard, looked about for Diana. The place was fairly a-throng with vehicles, farmers' gigs, carts, curricles and the like; in one corner of the long penthouse I espied the Tinker's cart with Diogenes champing philosophically at a truss of hay, but Diana herself was nowhere to be seen. Therefore, having deposited my parcel in the cart among divers other packages (which I took to be the stores Jeremy had mentioned), I seated myself in a remote and shady corner and glanced around. Horses munched and snorted all about me, unseen hostlers hissed and whistled, and a man in a smart livery hung upon the bridles of two horses harnessed to a handsome closed travelling carriage, blood-horses that tossed proud heads and stamped impatient hoofs, insomuch that the groom alternately cursed and coaxed them, turning his head ever and anon to glance towards a certain back door of the inn with impatient expectancy. And thus it befell that I began to watch this door also and as the moments elapsed there waked within me a strange and bodeful trembling eagerness, a growing anxiety to behold what manner of person that door would soon open for. So altogether unaccountable and disquieting was this feeling that I rose to my feet and in this moment the door swung wide and a man appeared.