Before and after these hours little if anything was looked for, and at four o'clock the establishment closed its doors.
But it came to pass that the proprietor of Chaffey's died, and the business fell into the hands of a young man with new ideas.

Within a few months Chaffey's underwent a transformation; it was pulled down, rebuilt, enlarged, beautified; nothing left of its old self but the name.

In place of the homely eating-house there stood a large hall, painted and gilded and set about with mirrors, furnished with marble tables and cane-bottomed chairs--to all appearances a restaurant on the France-Italian pattern.

Yet Chaffey's remained English, flagrantly English, in its viands and its waiters.

The new proprietor aimed at combining foreign glitter with the prices and the entertainment acceptable to a public of small means.