He said this just to startle her. "It will do you all the good in the world," she replied angelically, but unstartled. "It’s just what you need." And she gazed at him as though his welfare and felicity were her sole preoccupation. "I meant I might have to stop there quite a while," he insisted. "If you ask me," she said, "I think it would do us all good." So saying she retired, having expressed no curiosity whatever as to the nature of the very important business in London. For a moment, left alone, he was at a loss. Then, snorting, he went to the table and extinguished the lamp. He was now in darkness. The light in the hall showed him the position of the door. He snorted again. "Oh, very well then!" he muttered. "If that’s it! I’m hanged if I don’t go to London! I’m hanged if I don’t go to London!" CHAPTER III WILKINS’S I. The early adventures of Alderman Machin of Bursley at Wilkins’ Hotel, London, were so singular and to him so refreshing that they must be recounted in some detail. He went to London by the morning express from Knype, on the Monday week after his visit to the music-hall. In the meantime he had had some correspondence with Mr. Bryany, more poetic than precise, about the option, and had informed Mr. Bryany that he would arrive in London several days before the option expired. But he had not given a definite date. The whole affair, indeed, was amusingly vague; and, despite his assurances to his wife that the matter was momentous, he did not regard his trip to London as a business trip at all, but rather as a simple freakish change of air. The one certain item in the whole situation was that he had in his pocket a quite considerable sum of actual money, destined--he hoped but was not sure--to take up the option at the proper hour.