t; the houses were all
irregular and of different ages. On one side was a gap with palings
round it, where building was going on, and beyond rose a huge black
factory. But the condition of Primrose Place was beyond description. I
had never seen anything like it before, and kept as close to my father
as was consistent with boyish, dignity. The pathway was broken up,
children squalled at the doors and quarrelled in the street, which
was strewn with rags, and bones, and bits of old iron, and shoes, and
the tops of turnips. I do not think there was a whole unbroken window
in all the row of tall miserable houses, and the wet clothes hanging
out on lines stretched across the street, flapped above our heads. I
counted three cripples as we went up Primrose Place. My father stopped
to speak to several people, and I heard many complaints of the bad
state of trade to which my sister had alluded. He gave some money to
one woman, and spoke kindly to all; but he hurried me on as fast as he
could, and we turned at last into one of the houses.

My ill-humour had by this time almost worked itself off in the fresh
air, and the novel scenes through which we had come; and, for the
present, the morning's disappointment was forgotten as I followed my
father through the crowded miserable rooms, and clambered up staircase
after staircase, till we reached the top of the house, and stumbled
through a latched door into the garret. After so much groping in the
dark, the light dazzled me, and I thought at first that the room was
empty. But at last a faint "Good day" from the corner near the window
drew my eyes that way; and there, stretched on a sort of bed, and
supported by a chair at his back, lay the patient we had come to see.

He was a young man about twenty-six years old, in the last stage of
that terrible disease so fatally common in our country--he was dying
of consumption. There was no mistaking the flushed cheek, the
painfully laborious breathing, and the incessant cough; while two old
crutches in the corner spoke of another affliction--he was a cripple.
His gaunt face lighted up with a glow of pleasure when my father came
in, who seated himself at once on the end of the bed, and began to
talk to him, whilst I looked round the room. There was absolutely
nothing in it, except the bed on which the sick man lay, the chair
that supported him, and a small three-legged table. The low roof was
terribly out of repair, and the window was patched