not at home, and would not be at home until late
in the evening. Would the lady leave her name?
No; but she desired Mrs. Bembridge might be
informed that a lady had called, and would call
again at the same hour on the morrow, who had
found an article of dress lost, at Homburg, by
Mrs. Bembridge, and which she would restore to
Mrs. Bembridge in person, but not otherwise.

As Harriet was returning home, she walked
down Piccadilly, and saw Mr. Felton and George
Dallas alighting from a cab at the door of the
house in which their lodgings had been engaged.

"Very fair, too," said Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge,
when she received Harriet's message
from her maid, "and very natural she should
expect a reward. Ladies often take advantage
of that kind of thing to give money to the poor.
I shan't grudge her anything she may ask in
reason, I shall be so glad to get back my golden
egg."

    HOUSE-HUNTING IN LISBON.

In a recent number of All the Year Round,*
I was attracted by an article headed
House-Hunting. I turned to it with the morbid interest
referable to my own experience in that
branch of misfortune. I put it down with a
feeling of triumphant superiority. " What,"
said I to myself, "can any one profess to
know of the misery of house-hunting who
starts his complaint with the announcement
that the house he sought was to be 'about
an hour's journey from London'?"
* See vol.xvi., page 84

I entered on the terrible sport of
house-hunting, in Lisbon.

I had been recently married; though not so
recently but that my packages amounted in
number to sixty, exclusive of a baby and a
sick-nurse who had borne me company on my
voyage across the Bay of Biscay. Being of a
cheerful temperament, I had thought, " Well,
it is only for three days; and, once landed, we
shall soon get a house, and with all our English
comforts around us, we shall have the home-like
feeling which makes all places pleasant."

So much has been said and sung of the fairy-
like aspect of Lisbon as you see it from the river,
and the material removal of such visions as you
enter the town, that of this I need say nothing.
A few hours after our first sight of the many
roofs, out of the number of which we hoped one
would soon shelter us, we found ourselves
crossing a magnificent square, dotted about with
the usual number of beggars showing the very
unequal share of limbs, and toes, and fingers,
which seem to be distributed capriciously
among the poor of Southern Europe. Picking
our way among those whom nature had too
bountifully supplied with legs, and followed by
others whose deficiency in those members had
been supplemented by wheels, we reached a very
clean and comfortable hotel. Here we agreed
to rest for that day, and to commence our
labours in house-hunting to-morrow.

Our arrival was quickly known to a few of
the English inhabitants, who had been asked to
be kind to us by ''mutual friends" in England.
They shook their heads discouragingly
when we talked of hoping to find a house and
furnish two or three rooms in a few weeks. We
thought they were not aware how humble were
our pretensions, and how easily satisfied we
should be with a small clean house. Accordingly,
next morning we hired a carriage, and
started at a pace unknown to London cabmen,
even when they are offered an extra fare to catch
the last train. This pace was scarcely an advantage
to us, as our hunt could only be carried
on by driving along the streets until we saw a
house with small squares of white paper, called
"scritos," wafered on each pane of its windows
indicating houses to let. Before one of these
houses, of promising outward appearance, we,
stopped our carriage.

A number of Portuguese women looked out
of the windows of that house, and out of all the
adjoining windows. One hurried look at their
tawny faces, coarse matted hair, and brawny
arms, one tone of their coarse masculine voices,
explained to me why the beauty of Portuguese
women had never been sung by any bards but
their own. After vainly striving to make ourselves
understood to these Lisbon maidens, in Italian
and Spanish, as well as by a judicious mixture
of the two, we were beginning to despair of
success, when our coachman awoke to a
consciousness that as we wished to see the interior
of this house to let, and as the door was locked,
it was not improbable we might be trying to get
the key. This discovery he confided in very
voluble tones (assisted by many gestures of
opening an ideal door with an imaginary key) to
all the women at the windows, as well as to a
great many more who had collected round us;
and, to our infinite relief, one of our audience,
who had disappeared after the eloquence of
the coachman subsided, reappeared with a key.
This promising-looking house had evidently
been built by some one who had the idea of
Lisbon as it appears from the Tagus, and
Lisbon as it is in reality, strongly engraved on his
memory. A clingy staircase faced us, running
steeply up between two blank walls, without
balusters or any turn or object to break its monotony,
except one dejected-looking spider which
had spun its web on a flat surface of the wall in
despair of finding a corner. Once on the landing
above, we found ourselves in a labyrinth of
tiny rooms and alcoves, not one of which was of
a size to be rendered habitable. Innumerable
passages intersected these small chambers
with no apparent object, except to darken and
diminish the little rooms to which they did not
lead. No one room communicated with another:
the solitary exception being that the drawing-room
opened into the kitchen.

"This will never do," we said, as we went
down the dark staircase. Once more we
drove along the streets, in quest of another