of money, he said, and would like nothing better.  ‘Then I’ll run down,’ said Toogood, ’and rummage up what tidings I can.  As for writing to the dean, what’s the good of writing to a man when you don’t know where he is?  Business letters always lie at hotels for two months, and then come back with double postage.  From all I can hear, you’ll stumble on her before you find him.  If we do nothing else but bring him back, it will be a great thing to have the support of such a friend in the court.  A Barchester jury won’t like to find a man guilty who is hand-and-glove with the dean.’

Mr Toogood reached the ‘Dragon’ about eleven o’clock, and allowed the boots to give him a pair of slippers and a candlestick.  But he would not go to bed just at that moment.  He would go into the coffee-room first, and have a glass of hot brandy-and-water.  So the hot brandy-and-water was brought to him, and a cigar, and as he smoked and drank he conversed with the waiter.  The man was a waiter of the ancient class, a grey-haired waiter, with seedy clothes, and a dirty towel under his arm; not a dapper waiter, with black shiny hair, and dressed like a guest for a dinner-party.  There are two distinct classes of waiters, and as far as I have been able to perceive, the special status of the waiter in question cannot be decided by observation of the class of waiter to which he belongs.  In such a town as Barchester you may find the old waiter with the dirty towel in the head inn, or in the second-class inn, and so you may the dapper waiter.  Or you may find both in each and not know which is senior waiter and which junior waiter.  But for service I always prefer the old waiter with the dirty towel, and I find it more easy to satisfy him in the matter of sixpence when my relations with the inn come to an end.

‘Have you been here long, John,’ said Mr Toogood.

‘A goodish many years, sir.’

’So I thought, by the look of you.  One can see that you belong in a way to the place.  You do a good deal of business here, I suppose, at this time of the year?’

‘Well, sir, pretty fair.  The house ain’t what it used to be sir.’

‘Times are bad at Barchester—­are they?’

’I don’t know much about the times.  It’s the people is worse than the times, I think.  They used to like to have a little bit of dinner now and again at a hotel;—­and a drop of something to drink after it.’

‘And don’t they like it now?’

’I think they like it well enough, but they don’t do it.  I suppose it’s their wives as don’t let ’em come out and enjoy themselves.  There used to be the Goose and Glee club;—­that was once a month.  They’ve gone and clean done away with themselves—­that club has.  There’s old Bumpter in the High Street—­he’s the last of the old Geese.  They died off, you see, and when Mr Biddle died they wouldn’t choose another president.  A club for having dinner, sir, ain’t nothing without a president.’