CHAPTER XVI.
It had but just gone five when Narkom walked into the little bar parlour and found him standing there, looking out on the quaint, old-fashioned bowling green that lay all steeped in sunshine and zoned with the froth of pear and apple blossoms thick piled above the time-stained bricks of an enclosing wall.
"What a model of punctuality you are, old chap," the superintendent said, nodding approvingly.

"Wait a moment while I go and order tea, and then we will get down to business in real earnest.

Shan't be long." "Pray, don't hurry yourself on my account, Mr.Narkom," returned Cleek, "coming down to earth" out of a mental airship.

"I could do with another hour of that"-- nodding toward the view--"and still wonder where the time had gone.

These quaint old inns, which the march of what we are pleased to call 'Progress' is steadily crowding off the face of the land, are always deeply interesting to me; I love them.