It was easy, and very likely correct, to imagine that the costume of male cooks and scullions has changed little with the progress of time, and the material reflections called up by that white cap were comforting. The man or woman who will not confess to enjoying a good dinner is usually either a hypocrite or one who, exiled from a real and innocent pleasure of life by a contemptible digestion, assumes airs of superiority on the ground of an abstinence due to fear and not to asceticism. Meanwhile the daughters had gone up a very ancient and charming staircase, of real oak, really black, with real age, not through the application of quick lime and water, and had been shown into "Queen Elizabeth's Chamber"; but a message that I must visit them there met me in the Jacobean bar parlour, and the visit was more than worth paying. It was a spacious room, if its floor area alone was considered; but of course the ceiling was very low, and the dark beams supporting it were still lower. It would have suited Hannah More, who loved ceilings you could touch as you stood, but it lacked the bishops she required as an accompaniment. At least it lacked them then. One great bed was of carved oak, relieved with gilding; another made no impression on my memory. But the long and low windows, the shining planks of the ancient floor, which boasted its own hills and valleys, slopes and hollows, and the cleanliness and brightness of everything made a very vivid and pleasant impression. Queen Elizabeth may not have slept in that chamber or in the "Maid's Head" at all when she visited Norwich in 1578 and weird pageants were displayed in her honour; I can find no evidence that she did, which is not to say that there is none; but the "Maid's Head" was an old inn even then, and it is reasonably certain that the chamber called after Queen Elizabeth was there also. It is an ideal room for those who hanker after the old world, but do not yearn for that dirt which, the more we think of it, seems to have been an all-pervading characteristic of the lives of our forefathers. The "Maid's Head" is spotlessly clean.