"Now for the bedrooms, Mr. Harvey," I said,
in desperation. I proceeded to carry out
Mrs. Masterman's suggestions. I danced on
floors, I essayed the dangerous and giddy passes
of the roof, at the risk of my life, I looked
down chimneys. The best bedroom was pretty
well, and looked out on the garden; but the
smaller ones were detestably sordid: a small
wooden partition dividing one from another,
the windows looking straight down on some
mean and dirty cottages.

Could I see the attics? Up we went again,
up a set of rickety unfinished stairs, with the
light showing through them. These opened at
once without a landing into a large tent-shaped
room under the tiles, with a sloping roof,
glimpses of light here and there, and a
chattering overhead of ruffling starlings and
impudent sparrows. An airy room it certainly was,
for a hardy maid-of-all-work; perhaps rather a
rheumatic room; but that could be remembered
in the wages.

Once more in the shop, and Mr. Harvey,
cheerful and lively behind his counter, I put to
him several bold questions not to be swerved
from. I held him down (metaphorically speaking)
as I asked him. I fixed him with my
glistening eye, like the ancient mariner.

"Whv was so good a house," I propounded,
"to be let so cheap? Was the drainage bad,
or was there anything special against it?"

"Not a wink"," said Mr. Harvey, after looking
very hard for a minute at a knot on the
floor, and making a vain attempt to whistle a
popular tune to show indifference both to me
and any question I could or would ask. "Not
a wink; only the best dining-room looked out
to the garden instead of on the street."

"Oh, that, I said, I preferred. Nothing else?"

"No, not a wink, except that the rooms were
rather low, and some people liked 'em high.
Old Mrs. Goldweight lived there seventeen year
and died there."

I took a measurement of the rooms and left.
When I got to London and told my solicitor, he
said,"What? Perdleton? Why, the lawyer
there is an agent of mine. I'll write to him."

He wrote. The answer knocked me down.

"Perdleton is not a healthy place. There is
always typhoid fever in the low grounds, and the
people are not remarkable for either honesty or
morality."

Instantly my vision of the place turned coal
black. I pictured processions of hearses up thelong dull hill. I fancied that jovial wretch
Harvey watching the doctor's daily visits at my
door, until at last the blinds were drawn down
slowly, and a low voice by my bedside said,
"He is gone!"

But, in point of fact, Mrs. Masterman had
long before sternly said, "Edward" (she had a
way of tolling my name out), "Edward" (another
tocsin), "I will never allow my child to be
sacrificed in low rooms for the sake of a few
paltry pounds."

Plangdon was the next place I visited. It is
a market town in Berkshire, very accessible
from London—a large dirty place, with all
the alleys and filth that it is possible to
accumulate in a given number of centuries. A
deep-sunken damp town, with pretty suburbs. I
went to the chief house-agent's, opposite the
market-place clock, and found a sporting sort of
man nibbling a quill, and treating business in a
contemptuous playful way.

"Were there any cottages near Plangdon to
let?"

"John," said the sporting auctioneer to one
of two giggling clerks, who seemed to be allowed
to be impudent to every one but their master:
"look and see what there is in the book. There's
Laylock House, three hundred pounds; and Mrs.
Bevan's place; and there's the Thompsons',
fourteen bedrooms."

I cut the fellow in two at once. "What I want,"
I sternly remarked, "is a small cottage
at about forty pounds a year, a mile from
the station, small garden, five bedrooms."

This intelligence so disgusted the sporting
auctioneer, that he looked at his gold hunting
watch, lighted a cigar, and at once strolled into
the town, leaving me to the two impertinent off-hand
clerks and the great red insolent-looking
reference-book.

"Yes. There was one small cottage, semi-detached,
on the Maggleton-road, five bedrooms,
small garden, fifty pound rent, had been ninety,
but half the house was now cut off and turned
into separate residence. Would I see it?"

This was really a nice place, "Havelock Villa,"
well built, plate-glass windows, good porch, good
front door. The only drawback was, we could not
get in. The workmen had gone. In vain we
rattled the door, rang the bell, tried the
windows, got on the back kitchen roof, looked down
the chimney. No one being in the house, it
was very natural that no one should answer.
No one answered, and nothing could be done.

It would have required a stout heart to have
daily splashed through that miserable rat-haunted
town, threaded that vile suburb, and
scrambled over rubbish-heaps, to that dark,
unlighted, last street of Plangdon, to find one's
wife and servants murdered, and the plate-box
gone. Such a garden, too—a passage of rough
turf, four lignum vitæ trees and a laurel.

Whish—h—h! Whish!

"Why, what's that?"

"That, zur?" said a native urchin. "That's
the train to Manglebury."

I took a few steps and looked over the hedge.
There was a deep railway cutting about twenty
yards from the bedroom window. Trains all
night. What a pleasant, retired, quiet
residence; and Mrs. Masterman a bad sleeper too!

"Boy, what's the first train to London?" I
exclaimed, indignantly, and shouldered my
umbrella with fierce determination. I began to hate
the petty miseries, the disappointed hope, the
mirages, of house-hunting.

The only comfort I got from Mrs. Masterman
was: "She could have told me at once that
Plangdon would never do." Lizzy looked
sorry.