right hand,
you walk lightly down-stairs, lest you should awaken any of the family,
and after pausing in the common sitting-room for one moment, just to have
a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably
comfortable, with everything out of its place, and strewed with the
crumbs of last night's supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the
street-door, and find yourself fairly in the street.

A thaw, by all that is miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You
look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights
mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the
road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be
had--the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is
drizzling down with that gentle regularity, which betokens a duration of
four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and
lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is
'coming in' in every area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are
running over; the kennels seem to be doing matches against time,
pump-handles descend of their own accord, horses in market-carts fall
down, and there's no one to help them up again, policemen look as if they
had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass; here and there a
milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to
keep her from slipping; boys who 'don't sleep in the house,' and are not
allowed much sleep out of it, can't wake their masters by thundering at
the shop-door, and cry with the cold--the compound of ice, snow, and
water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick--nobody ventures to
walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping
himself warm if he did.

It strikes a quarter past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on your
way to the Golden Cross, and you discover, for the first time, that you
were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back; there
is no place open to go into, and you have, therefore, no resource but to
go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and
everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up
the yard for the Birmingham High-flier, which, for aught you can see, may
have flown away altogether, for preparations appear to be on foot for the
departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the
booking-office, which with the gas-ligh