But that Roland Yorke had not seen the parlour at Helstonleigh (which the reader had the satisfaction of once entering with Mr. Butterby), he would have gone well nigh to think this the same room. The red carpet on the floor, the small book-shelves, the mahogany sideboard with its array of glasses, the horsehair chairs, the red cloth on the centre table, all had been transplanted. When Roland bustled in, he found Mrs. Jones knitting away at lambs' wool socks, as if for her life. In the intervals of her home occupation, or when her house was slack of lodgers, she did these for sale, and realized a very fair profit. "Now then," said Roland, stirring up the fire of his own accord, and making himself at home, as he liked to do wherever he might be, "I want to know all about everybody." Mrs. Jones turned her chair towards him with a jerk; and Roland put question after question about the old city, which he had so abruptly quitted more than seven years before. It may be that Mrs. Jones recognized in him a kind of fellow-sufferer. Neither of them cared to see Helstonleigh again, unless under the auspices of a more propitious fate than the present. Anyway, she was gracious to Roland, and gave him information as fast as he asked for it, repeating some things he had heard before. He persisted in calling her Mrs. Jenkins, saying it came more natural than the other name. Mr. Channing was dead. His eldest son Hamish was living in London. Arthur was Mr. Galloway's right hand; Tom was a clergyman, and just made a minor canon of the old cathedral; Charley Mrs. Jones knew nothing about, except that he was in India. The college school had got a new master. Mr. Ketch was reposing in a damp green nook, side by side with old Jenkins the bedesman. Hamish Channing's bank had come to grief, Mrs. Jenkins did not know how. In the panic, she believed. "And that beautiful kinsman of mine, William Yorke, reigns at Hazeldon, and old Galloway is flourishing in his office, with his flaxen curls!" burst forth Roland, suddenly struck with a weighty sense of injustice. "The bad people get the luck of it in this world, Mrs. Jenkins; the deserving ones go begging. Hamish Channing's bank come to grief;--bright Hamish! And look at me!--and you! I never saw such a world as this with its miserable ups and downs." "Ah," said Mrs. Jones with a touch of her native tartness, "it's a good thing there's another world to come after. We may find that a better one." The prospect (probably from being regarded as rather far-off) did not appear to afford present satisfaction to Roland. He sat pulling at his whiskers, moodily resenting the general blindness of Fortune in regard to merit, and then suddenly wheeled round to his own affairs. "I say, Mrs. J."--a compromise between the two names and serving for both--"I want a lodging. Couldn't you let me come here?" She looked up briskly. "What kind of a lodging? I mean as to position and price." "Oh, something comfortable," said Roland.