"Well," replied the butcher boy. "It's
a lively place, a werry lively place. I
should say that it was lively enough to
make a cricket bust himself for spite: it's
so uncommon lively." And with this
enigmatical deliverance the butcher boy
relapsed into a whistle of the utmost shrillness,
and rattled away towards Sobbington.

I wish that it had not been quite so
golden an afternoon. A little dulness, a
few clouds in the sky might have acted as
a caveat against Wretchedville. But I
plodded on and on, finding all things looking
beautiful in that autumn glow. I
came positively on a gipsy encampment;
blanket tent; donkey tethered to a
cartwheel; brown man in a wideawake,
hammering at a tin pot; brown woman with a
yellow kerchief, sitting cross-legged, mending
brown man's pantaloons; brown little
brats of Egypt swarming across the road,
and holding out their burnt-sienna hands
for largesse, and the regular gipsy's kettle
swinging from the crossed sticks over a fire
of stolen furze. Farmer Somebody's poultry
simmering in the pot, no doubt. Family
linen—somebody else's linen yesterday—
drying on an adjacent bush. Who says
that the picturesque is dead? The days of
Sir Roger de Coverley had come again.
So I went on and on admiring, and down
the declivitous road into Wretchedville,
and to Destruction.

Were there any apartments "to let?" Of
course there were. The very first house I
came to was, as regards the parlour window,
nearly blocked up by a placard treating
of apartments furnished. Am I right
in describing it as the parlour window?
I scarcely know, for the front door, with
which it was on a level, was approached by
such a very steep flight of steps that, when
you stood on the topmost one it seemed as
though, with a very slight effort, you could
have peeped in at the bedroom window, or
touched one of the chimney-pots; while, as
regards the basement, the front kitchen—I
beg pardon, the breakfast parlour—
appeared to be a good way above the level of
the street. The space in the first floor
window not occupied by the placard, was
filled by a monstrous group of wax fruit,
the lemons as big as pumpkins, and the
leaves unnaturally green. The window below
—it was a single windowed front—served
merely as a frame for the half-length
portrait of a lady in a cap, ringlets, and a
colossal cameo brooch. The eyes of this
portrait were fixed upon me, and before,
almost, I had lifted a very small, light
knocker, decorated, so far as I could make
out, with the cast-iron effigy of a
desponding ape, and had struck this against
a door which, to judge from the amount of
percussion produced, was composed of
Bristol board, highly varnished, the portal
itself flew open, and the portrait of the
basement appeared in the flesh. Indeed, it
was the same portrait. Down stairs it had
been Mrs. Primpris looking out into the
Wretchedville road for lodgers.
Upstairs it was Mrs. Primpris letting her
lodgings, and glorying in the act.

She didn't ask for any references. She
didn't hasten to inform me that there were
no children, or any other lodgers. She
didn't look doubtful, when I told her that
the whole of my luggage consisted of a
black bag, which I had left at the Sobbington
station. She seemed rather pleased than
otherwise at the idea of the bag, and said
that her Alfred should go for it. She
didn't object to smoking; and she at once
invested me with the Order of the
Latch-key—a latch-key at Wretchedville,
ha! ha! She further held me with her
glittering eye, and I listened like a two
years' child, while she let me the lodgings
for a fortnight, certain. Perhaps it was
less her eye that dazed me than her cameo,
on which there was, in high relief, and on
a ground of the hue of a pig's liver, the
effigy of a young woman with a straight
nose and a round chin; and a quantity of
snakes in her hair. I don't think that
cameo came from Rome. I think it came
from Tottenham-court-road.

She had converted me into a single
gentleman lodger, of quiet and retired
habits—or was I a widower of independent
means seeking a home in a cheerful
family?—so suddenly, that I beheld all
things as in a dream. Thinking, perchance,
that the first stone of that monumental
edifice, the Bill, could not be laid too quickly,
she immediately provided me with Tea.
There was a little cottage loaf, so hard,
round, shiny, and compact, that I
experienced a well-nigh uncontrollable desire
to fling it up to the ceiling, to ascertain
whether it would chip off any portion of a
preposterous rosette in stucco in the centre,
representing a sunflower, surrounded by
cabbage leaves. This terrible ornament
was, by the way, one of the chief sources of
my misery at Wretchedville. I was
continually apprehensive that it would tumble
down bodily on to the table. In addition
to the cottage loaf, there was a pretentious
teapot which, had it been of sterling silver,