Trust me you have an exceeding fine lodging here,—very neat
and private.—BEN JONSON.
It was a tolerably long walk to the abode of which the worthy broker spoke in such high terms of commendation. At length, at the suburbs towards Paddington, Mr. Brown stopped at a very small house; it stood rather retired from its surrounding neighbours, which were of a loftier and more pretending aspect than itself, and, in its awkward shape and pitiful bashfulness, looked exceedingly like a school-boy finding himself for the first time in a grown up party, and shrinking with all possible expedition into the obscurest corner he can discover. Passing through a sort of garden, in which a spot of grass lay in the embraces of a stripe of gravel, Mr. Brown knocked upon a very bright knocker at a very new door. The latter was opened, and a foot-boy appeared.
“Is Mrs. Copperas within?” asked the broker.
“Yees, sir,” said the boy.
“Show this gentleman and myself up stairs,” resumed Brown.
“Yees,” reiterated the lackey.
Up a singularly narrow staircase, into a singularly diminutive drawing-room, Clarence and his guide were ushered. There, seated on a little chair by a little work-table, with one foot on a little stool and one hand on a little book, was a little—very little lady.
“This is the young gentleman,” said Mr. Brown; and Clarence bowed low, in token of the introduction.
The lady returned the salutation with an affected bend, and said, in a mincing and grotesquely subdued tone, “You are desirous, sir, of entering into the bosom of my family. We possess accommodations of a most elegant description; accustomed to the genteelest circles, enjoying the pure breezes of the Highgate hills, and presenting to any guest we may receive the attractions of a home rather than of a lodging, you will find our retreat no less eligible than unique. You are, I presume, sir, in some profession, some city avocation—or—or trade?”
“I have the misfortune,” said he, smiling, “to belong to no profession.”
The lady looked hard at the speaker, and then at the broker. With certain people to belong to no profession is to be of no respectability.
“The most unexceptionable references will be givenmand required,” resumed Mrs. Copperas.
“Certainly,” said Mr. Brown, “certainly, the gentleman is a relation of Mrs. Minden, a very old customer of mine.”
“In that case,” said Mrs. Copperas, “the affair is settled;” and, rising, she rang the bell, and ordered the foot-boy, whom she addressed by the grandiloquent name of “De Warens” to show the gentleman the apartments. While Clarence was occupied in surveying the luxuries of a box at the top of the house, called a bed-chamber, which seemed just large and just hot enough for a chrysalis, and a corresponding box below, termed the back parlour, which would certainly not have been large enough for the said chrysalis when turned into a butterfly, Mr. Morris Brown, after duly, expatiating on the merits of Clarence, proceeded to speak of the terms; these were soon settled, for Clarence was yielding and the lady not above three times as extortionate as she ought to have been.
Before Linden left the house, the bargain was concluded. That night his trunks were removed to his new abode, and having with incredible difficulty been squeezed into the bedroom, Clarence surveyed them with the same astonishment with which the virtuoso beheld the flies in amber,—
“Not that the things were either rich or rare, He wondered how the devil they got there!”
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