A House to Let, et al | Page 5

Charles Dickens
place. So, nobody stayed with me in
my new lodging at first after Trottle had established me there safe and
sound, but Peggy Flobbins, my maid; a most affectionate and attached
woman, who never was an object of Philandering since I have known
her, and is not likely to begin to become so after nine-and-twenty years
next March.
It was the fifth of November when I first breakfasted in my new rooms.
The Guys were going about in the brown fog, like magnified monsters
of insects in table-beer, and there was a Guy resting on the door-steps
of the House to Let. I put on my glasses, partly to see how the boys
were pleased with what I sent them out by Peggy, and partly to make
sure that she didn't approach too near the ridiculous object, which of
course was full of sky-rockets, and might go off into bangs at any
moment. In this way it happened that the first time I ever looked at the
House to Let, after I became its opposite neighbour, I had my glasses
on. And this might not have happened once in fifty times, for my sight
is uncommonly good for my time of life; and I wear glasses as little as I
can, for fear of spoiling it.

I knew already that it was a ten-roomed house, very dirty, and much
dilapidated; that the area-rails were rusty and peeling away, and that
two or three of them were wanting, or half-wanting; that there were
broken panes of glass in the windows, and blotches of mud on other
panes, which the boys had thrown at them; that there was quite a
collection of stones in the area, also proceeding from those Young
Mischiefs; that there were games chalked on the pavement before the
house, and likenesses of ghosts chalked on the street-door; that the
windows were all darkened by rotting old blinds, or shutters, or both;
that the bills "To Let," had curled up, as if the damp air of the place had
given them cramps; or had dropped down into corners, as if they were
no more. I had seen all this on my first visit, and I had remarked to
Trottle, that the lower part of the black board about terms was split
away; that the rest had become illegible, and that the very stone of the
door-steps was broken across. Notwithstanding, I sat at my breakfast
table on that Please to Remember the fifth of November morning,
staring at the House through my glasses, as if I had never looked at it
before.
All at once--in the first-floor window on my right--down in a low
corner, at a hole in a blind or a shutter--I found that I was looking at a
secret Eye. The reflection of my fire may have touched it and made it
shine; but, I saw it shine and vanish.
The eye might have seen me, or it might not have seen me, sitting there
in the glow of my fire--you can take which probability you prefer,
without offence--but something struck through my frame, as if the
sparkle of this eye had been electric, and had flashed straight at me. It
had such an effect upon me, that I could not remain by myself, and I
rang for Flobbins, and invented some little jobs for her, to keep her in
the room. After my breakfast was cleared away, I sat in the same place
with my glasses on, moving my head, now so, and now so, trying
whether, with the shining of my fire and the flaws in the window-glass,
I could reproduce any sparkle seeming to be up there, that was like the
sparkle of an eye. But no; I could make nothing like it. I could make
ripples and crooked lines in the front of the House to Let, and I could
even twist one window up and loop it into another; but, I could make
no eye, nor anything like an eye. So I convinced myself that I really
had seen an eye.

Well, to be sure I could not get rid of the impression of this eye, and it
troubled me and troubled me, until it was almost a torment. I don't
think I was previously inclined to concern my head much about the
opposite House; but, after this eye, my head was full of the house; and I
thought of little else than the house, and I watched the house, and I
talked about the house, and I dreamed of the house. In all this, I fully
believe now, there was a good Providence. But, you will judge for
yourself about that, bye-and- bye.
My landlord was a butler, who had married a cook, and set up
housekeeping. They had not kept house
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