At last he jumped out of bed and into his tub, and dressed himself as quickly as he could. He worked himself up into a fit of fortitude, and resolved that the thing should be done before the fit was over. He ate his breakfast about nine, and then asked himself whether he might not be too early were he to go at once to Islington. But he remembered that she was always early. In every respect she was an energetic woman, using her time for some purpose, either good or bad, not sleeping it away in bed. If one has to be hung on a given day, would it not be well to be hung as soon after waking as possible? I can fancy that the hangman would hardly come early enough. And if one had to be hung in a given week, would not one wish to be hung on the first day of the week, even at the risk of breaking one's last Sabbath day in this world? Whatever be the misery to be endured, get it over. The horror of every agony is in its anticipation. Paul had realised something of this when he threw himself into a Hansom cab, and ordered the man to drive him to Islington. How quick that cab went! Nothing ever goes so quick as a Hansom cab when a man starts for a dinner-party a little too early;--nothing so slow when he starts too late. Of all cabs this, surely, was the quickest. Paul was lodging in Suffolk Street, close to Pall Mall,--whence the way to Islington, across Oxford Street, across Tottenham Court Road, across numerous squares north-east of the Museum, seems to be long. The end of Goswell Road is the outside of the world in that direction, and Islington is beyond the end of Goswell Road. And yet that Hansom cab was there before Paul Montague had been able to arrange the words with which he would begin the interview. He had given the street and the number of the street. It was not till after he had started that it occurred to him that it might be well that he should get out at the end of the street, and walk to the house,--so that he might, as it were, fetch his breath before the interview was commenced. But the cabman dashed up to the door in a manner purposely devised to make every inmate of the house aware that a cab had just arrived before it. There was a little garden before the house. We all know the garden;--twenty-four feet long, by twelve broad;--and an iron-grated door, with the landlady's name on a brass plate. Paul, when he had paid the cabman,--giving the man half-a-crown, and asking for no change in his agony,--pushed in the iron gate and walked very quickly up to the door, rang rather furiously, and before the door was well opened asked for Mrs. Hurtle.