He opened his eyes, looked at her blankly for a moment, stirred his limbs to make his position easier.

Pouring rain in London streets.  The cab drove eastward, but for no great distance.  Adela found herself alighting at a lodging-house not far from the reservoir at the top of Pentonville Hill.  Mutimer had taken these rooms a week ago.

A servant fresh from the blackleading of a grate opened the door to them, grinning with recognition at the sight of Mutimer.  The latter had to help the cabman to deposit the trunks in the passage.  Then Adela was shown to her bedroom.

It was on the second floor, the ordinary bedroom of cheap furnished lodgings, with scant space between the foot of the bed and the fireplace, with a dirty wall-paper and a strong musty odour.  The window looked upon a backyard.

She passed from the bedroom to the sitting-room; here was the same vulgar order, the same musty smell.  The table was laid for dinner.

Mutimer read his wife’s countenance furtively.  He could not discover how the abode impressed her, and he put no question.  When he returned from the bedroom she was sitting before the fire, pensive.

‘You’re hungry, I expect?’ he said.

Her appetite was far from keen, but in order not to appear discontented she replied that she would be glad of dinner.

The servant, her hands and face half washed, presently appeared with a tray on which were some mutton-chops, potatoes, and a cabbage.  Adela did her best to eat, but the chops were ill-cooked, the vegetables poor in quality.  There followed a rice-pudding; it was nearly cold; coagulated masses of rice appeared beneath yellowish water.  Mutimer made no remark about the food till the table was cleared.  Then he said: 

’They’ll have to do better than that.  The first day, of course—­You’ll have a talk with the landlady whilst I’m out to-night.  Just let her see that you won’t be content with anything; you have to talk plainly to these people.’

‘Yes, I’ll speak about it,’ Adela replied.

‘They made a trouble at first about waiting on us,’ Mutimer pursued.  ’But I didn’t see how we could get our own meals very well.  You can’t cook, can you?’

He smiled, and seemed half ashamed to ask the question.

‘Oh yes; I can cook ordinary things,’ Adela said.  ’But—­we haven’t a kitchen, have we?’

’Well, no.  If. we did anything of that kind, it would have to be on this fire.  She charges us four shillings a week more for cooking the dinner.’

He added this information in a tone of assumed carelessness.

‘I think we might save that,’ Adela said.  ’If I had the necessary things—­I should like to try, if you will let me.’

’Just as you please.  I don’t suppose the stuff they send us up will ever be very eatable.  But it’s too bad to ask you to do work of that kind.’

’Oh, I shan’t mind it in the least!  It will be far better, better in every way.’