the village and to the little house Overroads, you enter, as like as
not, as I did, a gate set in a pleasant hedge, and you knock at a side
door, to the mirth later of Mrs. Chesterton.

This agreeable entrance is that for tradesmen. The way you should have
gone in is round somewhere on another road. A maid admits you to a
small parlour and in a moment Mrs. Chesterton comes in to inquire if
you have an appointment with her husband. She always speaks of Mr.
Chesterton as "my husband." It develops that the letter you sent
fixing the appointment got balled up in some way. It further develops
that a good many things connected with Mr. Chesterton's life and house
get balled up. Mrs. Chesterton's line seems to be to keep things about
a chaotic husband as straight as possible.

Mr. Chesterton is a very fat man. His portraits, I think, hardly do
him sufficient honour in this respect. He has a remarkably red face.
And a smallish moustache, lightish in colour against this background.
His expression is extraordinarily innocent; he looks like a monstrous
infant. A tumbled mane tops him off. He sits in his parlour in a very
small chair.

Did I write him when I was coming? Wonder what became of the letter?
Doesn't remember it. Perhaps it is in his dressing gown. Has a habit
of sticking things that interest him into the pocket of his dressing
gown. Where, do you suppose, is his dressing gown? However, no
matter. "Have a cigar. Do have a cigar. Wonder where my cigars are!
Where are my cigars?" Mrs. Chesterton locates them.

Now about that poem, "The Inn at the End of the World," or some such
thing. He is inclined to think that he did write it, but he cannot