You'll really need to get to dinner before you can do much else. You need to keep track of the number of moves you make once outdoors--the number must be exactly right to hit dinnertime. Fortunately, it's a small number, so you can exit the boarding house, go up the road once, then back down, then re-enter the house and see if dinner's ready. Keep experimenting; it's probably the trickiest section of the game.