perfect cube. One side was window,
overlooking a strip of clay soil hemmed in
between brick walls. There were no
tombstones yet, but if it wasn't a cemetery why,
when I opened the window to get rid of
the odour of the varnish, did it smell like
one? The opposite side of the cube was
composed of a chest of drawers. I am not
impertinently curious by nature, but, as I
was the first-floor lodger, I thought myself
entitled to open the top long drawer, with a
view to the bestowal therein of the contents
of my black bag. The drawer was not
empty; but that which it held made me
very nervous. I suppose the weird figure
I saw stretched out there, with pink arms
and legs sprouting from a shroud of silver
paper, a quantity of ghastly auburn curls,
and two blue glass eyes unnaturally gleaming
in the midst of a mask of salmon-
coloured wax, was Selina's best doll, the
present, perhaps, of her uncle, who was,
haply, a Calcutta director, or an Asylum
Press Almanac maker, or a brewer and
distiller, or a cashier in the Bank of Faith.
I shut the drawer again hurriedly, and that
doll, in its silver paper cerecloth, haunted
me all night.

The third side of my bedroom consisted of
chimney—the coldest, hardest, brightest
looking fireplace I ever saw, out of Hampton
Court Palace guardroom. The fourth side
was door. I forget into which corner was
hitched a washhand stand. The ceiling
was mainly stucco rosette, of the pattern of
the one in my sitting-room. Among the
crazes which came over me at this time
was one, to the effect that this bedroom
was a cabin on board ship, and that if the
ship should happen to lurch, or roll in the
trough of the sea, I must infallibly tumble
out of the door, or the window, or into the
drawer where the doll was—unless the
drawer and the doll came out to me—or up
the chimney. I think that I murmured
"Steady," as I clomb into bed. My couch
—an "Arabian" one Mrs. Primpris said
proudly—seemingly consisted of the Logan,
or celebrated rocking stone of Cornwall,
loosely covered with bleached canvas, under
which was certain loose foreign matter, but
whether composed of flocculi of wool, or of
the halves of kidney potatoes I am not in a
position to state. At all events I awoke in
the morning, marbled all over like a
scagliola column. I never knew, too, before,
that any blankets were ever manufactured,
in Yorkshire or elsewhere, so remarkably
small and thin as the two seeming flannel
pocket-handkerchiefs with blue and crimson
edging, which formed part of Mrs. Primpris's
Arabian bed-furniture. Nor had I hitherto
been aware, as I was when I lay with that
window at my feet, that the moon was so very
large. The orb of night seemed to tumble
upon me, flat, until I felt as though I were
lying in a cold frying-pan. It was a
"watery moon," I have reason to think,
for when I awoke the next morning, much
battered with visionary conflicts with the
doll, I found that it was raining cats and
dogs.

"The rain," the poet tells us, "it raineth
every day." It rained most prosaically all
that day at Wretchedville, and the next, and
from Monday morning till Saturday night,
and then until the middle of the next week.
Dear me! Dear me! How wretched I was.
I hasten to declare that I have no kind of
complaint to make against Mrs. Primpris.
Not a flea was felt in her house. The
cleanliness of the villa was so scrupulous as to
be distressing. It smelt of soap and scrubbing
brush, like a Refuge. Mrs. Primpris
was strictly honest, even to the extent of
inquiring what I would like to have done
with the fat of cold mutton chops, and sending
me up antediluvian crusts, the remnants
of last week's cottage loaves, with
which I would play moodily at knock-'em-downs,
using the pepper caster as a pin. I
have nothing to say against Alfred's fondness
for art. India-rubber, to be sure, is apter to
smear than to obliterate drawings in chalk;
but a threepenny piece is not much; and
you cannot too early encourage the imitative
faculties. And again, if Selina did require
correction, I am not prepared to deny that
a shoe may be the best implement, and the
bladebones the most fitting portion of the
human anatomy, for such an exercitation. I
merely say that I was wretched at Wretchedville,
and that Mrs. Primpris's apartments
very much aggravated my misery. The
usual objections taken to a lodging house
are to the effect that the furniture is
dingy, the cooking execrable, the servant
a slattern, and the landlady either a
crocodile or a tigress. Now my indictment
against my Wretchedville apartments
simply amounts to this: that everything
was too new. Never were there such
staring paper-hangings, such gaudily printed
druggets for carpets, such blazing hearth-
rugs—one representing the Dog of
Montargis seizing the murderer of the Forest of
Bondy—such gleaming fire-irons, and such
remarkably shiny looking-glasses, with gilt
halters for frames. The crockery was new,
and the glue in the chairs and tables was