The Project Gutenberg eBook, A House to Let, by Charles Dickens, et al

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A House to Let

Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: May 10, 2005 [eBook #2324]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HOUSE TO LET***

Transcribed from the 1903 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. Proofed by David, Edgar Howard, Dawn Smith, Terry
Jeffress and Jane Foster.

A HOUSE TO LET (FULL TEXT)
by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Ann
Procter

Contents:

Over the Way
The Manchester Marriage
Going into Society
Three Evenings in the House
Trottle's Report
Let at Last

OVER THE WAY

I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for ten
years, when my medical man--very clever in his profession, and the
prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist, which was
a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of--said to me, one
day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa which my poor dear
sister Jane worked before her spine came on, and laid her on a board for
fifteen months at a stretch--the most upright woman that ever lived--said
to me, "What we want, ma'am, is a fillip."

"Good gracious, goodness gracious, Doctor Towers!" says I, quite startled
at the man, for he was so christened himself: "don't talk as if you were
alluding to people's names; but say what you mean."

"I mean, my dear ma'am, that we want a little change of air and scene."

"Bless the man!" said I; "does he mean we or me!"

"I mean you, ma'am."

"Then Lard forgive you, Doctor Towers," I said; "why don't you get into a
habit of expressing yourself in a straightforward manner, like a loyal
subject of our gracious Queen Victoria, and a member of the Church of
England?"

Towers laughed, as he generally does when he has fidgetted me into any of
my impatient ways--one of my states, as I call them--and then he began,--

"Tone, ma'am, Tone, is all you require!" He appealed to Trottle, who
just then came in with the coal-scuttle, looking, in his nice black suit,
like an amiable man putting