r marriage, you will
hardly be in lodgings.

Those in Cecil-street are neat and convenient. The owner is a widow of
a good character; and she insists, that you take them for a twelvemonth
certain.

You may have good accommodations in Dover-street, at a widow's,
the relict of an officer in the guards, who dying soon after he had
purchased his commission (to which he had a good title by service,
and which cost him most part of what he had) she was obliged to let
lodgings.

This may possibly be an objection. But she is very careful, she says,
that she takes no lodgers, but of figure and reputation. She rents two
good houses, distant from each other, only joined by a large handsome
passage. The inner-house is the genteelest, and very elegantly
furnished; but you may have the use of a very handsome parlour in the
outer-house, if you choose to look into the street.

A little garden belongs to the inner-house, in which the old gentlewoman
has displayed a true female fancy; having crammed it with vases,
flower-pots, and figures, without number.

As these lodgings seemed to me the most likely to please you, I was more
particular in my inquiries about them. The apartments she has to let
are in the inner-house: they are a dining-room, two neat parlours, a
withdrawing-room, two or three handsome bedchambers, one with a pretty
light closet in it, which looks into the little garden, all furnished in
taste.

A dignified clergyman, his wife, and maiden daughter were the last who
lived in them. They have but lately quitted them, on his being presented
to a considerable church preferment in Ireland. The gentlewoman says
that he took the lodgings but for three months certain; but liked them
and her usage so well, that he continued in them two years; and left
them with regret, though on so good an account. She bragged, that this
was the way of all the lodgers she ever had, who staid with her four
times as long as they at first intended.

I had some knowledge of the colonel, who was always looked upon as a man
of honour. His relict I never saw before. I think she has a masculine
air, and is a little forbidding at first: but when I saw her behaviour
to two agreeable gentlewomen, her husband's nieces, whom, for that
reason, she calls doubly hers, and heard their praises of her, I could
imputer her very bulk to good humour; since we seldom see your sour
peevish people plump. She lives reputably, and is, as I find, aforehand
in the wo