odged into his street
conventionally garbed and in a hansom. Then his greeting was cordial
enough, and I went down into the dining-room to join the family at tea.

"We are humble here," he said, "not given to the flesh, and you must take
us for what we are, in our humble way."

The girls were flushed and embarrassed at greeting me, while he did not
make it any the easier for them.

"Ha! ha!" he roared heartily, slapping the table with his open hand till
the dishes rang. "The girls thought yesterday you had come to ask for a
piece of bread! Ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!"

This they indignantly denied, with snapping eyes and guilty red cheeks,
as though it were an essential of true refinement to be able to discern
under his rags a man who had no need to go ragged.

And then, while I ate bread and marmalade, proceeded a play at cross
purposes, the daughters deeming it an insult to me that I should have
been mistaken for a beggar, and the father considering it as the highest
compliment to my cleverness to succeed in being so mistaken. All of
which I enjoyed, and the bread, the marmalade, and the tea, till the time
came for Johnny Upright to find me a lodging, which he did, not half-a-
dozen doors away, in his own respectable and opulent street, in a house
as like to his own as a pea to its mate.

CHAPTER III--MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS

From an East London standpoint, the room I rented for six shillings, or a
dollar and a half, per week, was a most comfortable affair. From the
American standpoint, on the other hand, it was rudely furnished,
uncomfortable, and small. By the time I had added an ordinary typewriter
table to its scanty furnishing, I was hard put to turn around; at the
best, I managed to navigate it by a sort of vermicular progression
requiring great dexterity and presence of mind.

Having settled myself, or my property rather, I put on my knockabout
clothes and went out for a walk. Lodgings being fresh in my mind, I
began to look them up, bearing in mind the hypothesis that I was a poor
young man with a wife and large family.

My first discovery was that empty houses were few and far between--so far
between, in fact, that though I walked miles in irregular circles over a
large area, I still remained between. Not one empty house could I find--a
conclusive proof that the district was "saturated."

It being plain that as a poor young man with a family I could rent no
houses at all in this most und