A House to Let | Page 2

House been to let, in the name of
Fortune?" said I.
"Ever so long," said Trottle. "Years."
"Is it in ruins?"
"It's a good deal out of repair, ma'am, but it's not in ruins."
The long and the short of this business was, that next day I had a pair of
post-horses put to my chariot--for, I never travel by railway: not that I
have anything to say against railways, except that they came in when I
was too old to take to them; and that they made ducks and drakes of a
few turnpike-bonds I had--and so I went up myself, with Trottle in the
rumble, to look at the inside of this same lodging, and at the outside of
this same House.
As I say, I went and saw for myself. The lodging was perfect. That, I
was sure it would be; because Trottle is the best judge of comfort I
know. The empty house was an eyesore; and that I was sure it would be
too, for the same reason. However, setting the one thing against the
other, the good against the bad, the lodging very soon got the victory
over the House. My lawyer, Mr. Squares, of Crown Office Row;
Temple, drew up an agreement; which his young man jabbered over so

dreadfully when he read it to me, that I didn't understand one word of it
except my own name; and hardly that, and I signed it, and the other
party signed it, and, in three weeks' time, I moved my old bones, bag
and baggage, up to London.
For the first month or so, I arranged to leave Trottle at the Wells. I
made this arrangement, not only because there was a good deal to take
care of in the way of my school-children and pensioners, and also of a
new stove in the hall to air the house in my absence, which appeared to
me calculated to blow up and burst; but, likewise because I suspect
Trottle (though the steadiest of men, and a widower between sixty and
seventy) to be what I call rather a Philanderer. I mean, that when any
friend comes down to see me and brings a maid, Trottle is always
remarkably ready to show that maid the Wells of an evening; and that I
have more than once noticed the shadow of his arm, outside the room
door nearly opposite my chair, encircling that maid's waist on the
landing, like a table-cloth brush.
Therefore, I thought it just as well, before any London Philandering
took place, that I should have a little time to look round me, and to see
what girls were in and about the 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