o a room which
seemed to be at the top of the house and situated in its remotest
corner.

It was a very small apartment, hardly larger than the room over the hall
at home in which Aunt Bridget had made me sleep when I was a child, and
it was nearly as cold and cheerless.

The wall-paper, which had once been a flowery pink, was now pale and
patternless; the Venetian blind over the window (which looked out on the
smaller square) had lost one of its cords and hung at an irregular
angle; there was a mirror over the mantelpiece with the silvering much
mottled, and a leather-covered easy chair whereof the spring was broken
and the seat heavily indented.

"I dare say this will do for the present," said my landlady, and though
my heart was in my mouth I compelled myself to agree.

"My terms, including meals and all extras, will be a pound a week," she
added, and to that also, with a lump in my throat I assented, whereupon
my landlady left me, saying luncheon was on and I could come downstairs
when I was ready.

A talkative cockney chambermaid, with a good little face, brought me a
fat blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and combed I found my
way down to the dining-room.

What I expected to find there I hardly know. What I did find was a large
chamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in need of
refreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which some twenty
persons sat eating, with the landlady presiding at the top.

The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed to me at
that first sight to be dressed in every variety of out-of-date clothes,
many of them rather shabby and some almost grotesque.

Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I entered,
and I was so confused that I stood hesitating near the door until the
landlady called to me.

"Come up here," she said, and when I had done so, and taken the seat by
her side, which had evidently been reserved for me, she whispered:

"I don't think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What is it?"

I had no time to deliberate.

"O'Neill," I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising her
voice, and addressing the company as if they had been members of her
family, said:

"Mrs. O'Neill, my dears."

Then the ladies at the table inclined their heads at me and smiled,
while the men (especially those who were the most strangely dressed)
rose from their seats and bowed deeply.

EIGHTIETH CHAPTE