"You exhibit a delicacy for which you deserve great credit. I will make a clean breast of it, Applebee. The fact is, I am looking for a lodging."
"You always was a bit of a wag, sir," said Constable Applebee, with twinkling eyes.
"Was I? But I assure you I am not wagging now. Do you know of a room to let in a decent house in the neighbourhood, where they would give their young man lodger a latchkey?"
"Now, are you serious, sir?"
"As a judge."
"Well, then, there's Constable Pond, sir. He's taken a house in Paradise Row, and there's a room to let in it; he mentioned it to me only to-night. If you're really in earnest he'd jump at you."
"From which metaphor," said Dick, with mock seriousness, "I judge that he would consider me an eminently fit person to be entrusted with a latchkey."
"That's the ticket, sir," said Constable Applebee, bursting with laughter. "Upon my word, you're the merriest gentleman I've ever known. It's as good as a play, it is."
"Better than many I've seen, I hope," said Dick, still with his mock serious air, which confirmed Constable Applebee in his belief that the young fellow was having a joke with him. "Am I mistaken in supposing that there is a Mrs. Pond?"
"To be sure there is, and as nice a woman as ever breathed. No family at present, but my missis tells me"--here he dropped his voice, as though he were communicating a secret of a sacred nature--"that Mrs. Pond has expectations."