't there. There was a chest of
drawers whose previous owner had apparently been in the habit of
tumbling into bed by candle-light and leaving it to splutter its decline
and shed its pale blood where it would. The ceiling was picked out with
fly-spots. It smelt--how shall I give it to you? The outgoing tenant had
obviously used the hearth as a spittoon. He had obviously supped nightly
on stout and fish-and-chips. He had obviously smoked the local
Cavendish. He had obviously had an acute objection to draughts of any
kind. The landlady had obviously "done up" the room once a week.... Now
perhaps you get that odour.

But the lady at my side, seeing hesitation, began a kind of paean on the
room. She sang it in its complete beauty. She dissected it, and made a
panegyric on the furniture in comparison with that of Mrs.
Over-the-Road. She struck the lyre and awoke a louder and loftier strain
on the splendour of its proportions and symmetry--"heaps of room here to
swing a cat"--and her rapture and inspiration swelled as she turned
herself to the smattering price charged for it. On this theme she
chanted long and lovingly and a hundred coloured, senescent imageries
leaped from the song.

Of course, I had to take it. And towards late afternoon, when the grey
cloak of twilight was beginning to be torn by the gas lamps, I had
pulled the whole place to pieces and found out what made it work. I had
stood it on its head. I had reversed it, and armlocked it, and committed
all manner of assaults on it. I had found twenty old cigarette ends
under the carpet, and entomological wonders in the woodwork of the
window. Fired by my example, the good lady came up to help, and when I
returned from a stroll she had garnished it. Two chairs, on which in my
innocence I sat, were draped with antimacassars. Some portraits of drab
people, stiffly posing, had been placed on the mantelshelf, and some
dusty wool mats, set off with wax flowers, were lighting the chest of
drawers to sudden beauty. In my then mood the false luxury touched me
curiously.

There I was and there I stayed in slow, mortifying idleness. _You_ get
stranded in Kingsland Road for a fortnight ... I wish you would. It
would teach you so many things. For it is a district of cold, muddy
squalor that it is ashamed to own itself. It is a place of narrow
streets, dwarfed houses, backed by chimneys that growl their way to the
free sky, and day and night belch forth surly smoke and stink of