“Bring her right away to breakfast at the hotel!” cried Rufus, with every appearance of feeling infinitely relieved. “I don’t say I can supply you with the venerable Chief Christian--but I can find a woman to fix you, who is as nigh to being an angel, barring the wings, as any she-creature since the time of mother Eve.” He knocked at the bedroom door, turning a deaf ear to every appeal for further information which Amelius could address to him. “Breakfast is waiting, miss!” he called out; “and I’m bound to tell you that the temper of the cook at our hotel is a long way on the wrong side of uncertain. Well, Amelius, this is the age of exhibition. If there’s ever an exhibition of ignorance in the business of packing a portmanteau, you run for the Gold Medal--and a unanimous jury will vote it, I reckon, to a young man from Tadmor. Clear out, will you, and leave it to me.” He pulled off his coat, and conquered the difficulties of packing in a hurry, as if he had done nothing else all his life. The landlady herself, appearing with pitiless punctuality exactly at the expiration of the hour, “smoothed her horrid front” in the polite and placable presence of Rufus. He insisted on shaking hands with her; he took pleasure in making her acquaintance; she reminded him, he did assure her, of the lady of the captain-general of the Coolspring Branch of the St. Vitus Commandery; and he would take the liberty to inquire whether they were related or not. Under cover of this fashionable conversation, Simple Sally was taken out of the room by Amelius without attracting notice. She insisted on carrying her threadbare old clothes away with her in the box which had contained the new dress. “I want to look at them sometimes,” she said, “and think how much better off I am now.” Rufus was the last to take his departure; he persisted in talking to the landlady all the way down the stairs and out to the street door. While Amelius was waiting for his friend on the house-steps, a young man driving by in a cab leaned out and looked at him. The young man was Jervy, on his way from Mr. Ronald’s tombstone to Doctors’ Commons. CHAPTER 3 With a rapid succession of events the morning had begun. With a rapid succession of events the day went on.