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There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio. We, on our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommodation for two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one table. There was not so much as a glass of water.
Lewisham felt a curious change of atmosphere on his entry. The door slammed behind him. The hall with its insistent scholastic suggestions, its yellow marbled paper, its long rows of hat-pegs, its disreputable array of umbrellas, a broken mortar-board and a tattered and scattered Principia, seemed dim and dull in contrast with the luminous stir of the early March evening outside.
There the young folks were crowding round the hat-pegs, some to find their own wraps, some to take down other people's. "I suppose it's no good trying to push our way forward," said the fair one. Ola's windpipe contracted in such a vexatious way that he only succeeded in uttering a meaningless sound.
The streets preserve their contours, but on either side the houses stand like gaunt skeletons, roofless and shattered, fronts knocked out, floors smashed through or hanging in fragments, bedsteads tumbling down through the broken ceiling of the sitting-room, pictures askew on the tottering walls, household treasures a forlorn wreckage, hats still hanging on the hat-pegs, the table-cloth still laid, the fireplace lustreless with the ashes of the last fire.
It was plainly and very comfortably furnished, and every arrangement seemed to have been made that could conduce to the convenience of the members. At one end was a long row of hat-pegs, and upon these, at various angles, hung a singular assortment of garden hats and caps, of every imaginable shape and colour.
And yet one may have been member of a Club for many a year without ever exactly understanding the use and object of the other members, until one enters, some Christmas day or other holiday, and, surveying the deserted armchairs, the untenanted sofas, the barren hat-pegs, realizes, with depression, that those other fellows had their allotted functions, after all. Where was old Jerry?
A daughter was similarly installed as maid, and the two achieved an effect of smartness unprecedented in Red Gap, an effect to which I am glad to say that the community responded instantly. In other establishments it was the custom for patrons to hang their garments on hat-pegs, often under a printed warning that the proprietor would disclaim responsibility in case of loss.
He had time for no more. A bell was being rung somewhere below, and he hurried down, eager to conform to his uncle's wishes. "This way, Tom," greeted him; and his uncle pointed to the hat-pegs. "You'd better take to those two at the end, and stick to them, for Mrs Fidler's a bit of a tyrant with me with us it will be now.
He had acquired authority. He had also acquired the sure manner of one accustomed to preside. "Before we begin on the agenda," he said and as he spoke a late member crept apologetically in and tiptoed to the heavily charged hat-pegs "I would like to mention about Miss Trewas.
"Yes, you should hear Lance tell the story of his sister-in-law Ethel, how she began at Cocksmoor, with seven children and fifteen shillings, and thought her fortune made when she got ten pounds a year for the school-mistress; and now it is all Mrs. Rivers can do to keep out the School-board, because they had not a separate room for the hat-pegs!" "We never had those struggles.
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