other.

It lay somewhere out Brompton way; in which district neat rows of small
houses are to be found looking backward upon pleasant greens and
gardens. There he had found a modest little suite of apartments; one
sitting-room and two bedrooms--a room for his mother and another
sometimes occupied by himself.

The little hut, a tiny place it was, was clean to the greatest nicety,
and though fitted up in the very simplest and cheapest manner, had an
air of perfect comfort. The walls were stained green, the drugget upon
the floor was pink and fawn; the chairs were covered with what used to
be called Manchester stripe--very clean and pleasant-looking, and
excellent for wash and wear. There was a pretty little table for tea and
dinner, and a nice, round three-clawed one close by the mother's
side--who was established in the only article of luxury in the room, a
very comfortable arm-chair. There the old lady passed her life.

She had lost the use of her lower limbs for some years; but her health
of body and mind in other respects was sound. The only thing for which
the son had as yet _coveted_ a little more money, had been that he might
possess the means to give his mother the enjoyment of exercise and air;
and when he passed young men, the very pictures of health and strength,
lounging idly in their carriages, as one sometimes does in the Park,
though not given to such nonsense, he could not help uttering a secret
exclamation against the inequalities of fortune, and thinking the
blindness of the goddess of the wheel no fable.

They were but passing thoughts these, such as the best have when they
languish for the means of bestowing good.

Such indulgences, however, were rarely to be thought of, though now and
then he managed to obtain them; but as the best compensation he could
make, he paid a few guineas a year more for this pretty apartment, of
which the back room, elongated into a little bow-window, formed the
sitting-room--what would have been the front sitting-room being divided
into the two bedrooms. This pleasant bow-window looked over a row of
gardens belonging to the neighboring houses, and these to a considerable
tract of nursery-ground filled with rows of fruit trees, and all the
cheerful pleasant objects to be seen in such places. In summer the
arm-chair was wheeled to the window, and the whole of the view was
disclosed to the old lady; in winter it returned to the fire; but even
there she did not lose her pr