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The fish was visited, also the grocer, the little linen-draper and all-sorts shop, and the stationer. The fish after some fifteen minutes' wait produced an anonymous piece of stiff whitish slipperiness called fillets, the grocer at last had in stock a little washing soda for which she had been waiting three weeks, the linen-draper's had just got in its quota of non-elastic elastic and was able to let her have a yard, the stationer had one copy of the month's local bus and train guide.

Her luck being for the moment in, she decided to begin her search for lodgings and went straight to the office of Pattern and Son.

The late Mr. Pattern, founder of the firm, had always been, or so he said, one for practising what he preached. As no one knew what he preached, the accuracy of his practice was a matter for speculation, but he undoubtedly built as he would be built by. His office, for which he had been designer and contractor, was erected on a corner where some very picturesque cottages had stood. The cottages, it is true, were below ground level, insanitary, a home for rats and bugs, the thatch a mass of decaying vegetation, and it was high time they went. But while the gentry were beginning to talk of doing something, Mr. Pattern, who though not exactly on the Council had a good many friends there, had got in first, bought the cottages and erected a stately pleasure dome to his own heart's desire. And when we say pleasure dome it is not poetical licence, for the crowning feature of his resurrection-pie architecture was a pepper-box turret, precariously attached to the corner of the building, with a small wooden dome which he caused to be painted to look like verdigris'd copper.