She seemed as much afraid of
Dick, as Dick was amazed at her.

"I haven't got anything to do with the lodgings," said Dick. "Tell 'em
to call again."

"Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings?" returned the girl;
"it's eighteen shillings a week, and us finding plate and linen. Boots
and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a day."

"Why don't you show 'em yourself? You seem to know all about 'em," said
Dick.

"Miss Sally said I wasn't to, because people wouldn't believe the
attendance was good if they saw how small I was, first."

"Well, but they'll see how small you are afterwards, won't they?" said
Dick.

"Ah! but then they'll have taken 'em for a fortnight certain," replied
the child, with a shrewd look; "and people don't like moving when
they're once settled."

"This is a queer sort of thing," muttered Dick, rising. "What do you
mean to say you are--the cook?"

"Yes; I do plain cooking," replied the child. "I'm housemaid too. I do
all the work of the house."

Just then certain sounds on the passage and staircase seemed to denote
the applicant's impatience. Richard Swiveller, therefore, hurried out to
meet and treat with the single gentleman.

He was a little surprised to perceive that the sounds were occasioned by
the progress upstairs of a trunk, which the single gentleman and his
coachman were endeavoring to convey up the steep ascent. Mr. Swiveller
followed slowly behind, entering a new protest on every stair against
the house of Mr. Sampson Brass being thus taken by storm.

To these remonstrances the single gentleman answered not a word, but
when the trunk was at last got into the bedroom, sat down upon it, and
wiped his bald head with his handkerchief. He then announced abruptly
that he would take the room for two years, whereupon, handing a
ten-pound note to the astonished Mr. Swiveller, he began to make ready
to retire, as if it were night instead of day, and Mr. Swiveller walked
downstairs into the office again, filled with wonderment concerning both
the strange new lodger and the small servant who had appeared to
answer the bell.

After that day, one circumstance troubled Mr. Swiveller's mind very
much, and that was, that the small servant always remained somewhere in
the bowels of the earth under Bevis Marks, and never came to the surface
unless a bell rang, when she would answer it, and immediately disappear
again. She never went out, or came into the office