"Mrs. Pemberton has not paid, I see. I don't wonder at all at that. Poor soul, she has had a great struggle for years, ever since her husband's death. She has tried to help herself along by letting lodgings, Mr. Blore told me, but that won't come to much in such a poor neighbourhood. I'm sure I don't know what could induce any one to lodge in such a district."
"People are often obliged to lodge near their place of business, no matter how objectionable their place of business may be," said he sententiously. Then he added with a smile, "Why, recollect, Nellie, that I myself am a lodger for business purposes in the locality."
"Of course you are, dear. I quite forgot that. And what kind of people are you lodging with?" she asked cheerfully, anxious to get his mind as far away as possible from those wretched Consols and rapacious artificers.
"O, they seem to be quiet respectable people enough. A little slow, you know, but perhaps none the worse for that when they have for a lodger such a gay young spark as I." He smiled.
She looked lovingly at him, and laughed at the enormity of the joke of his calling himself gay and fancying any society could harm him. "And now you must tell me what your landlord and landlady are like." He seemed to have forgotten about the wretched Consols and rapacious artificers.
"Well, Layard is a man who has something to do in the gas-house. The chief thing about him is a long beard. He's rather like a monkey with a beard."
"And what is Miss Layard like?"
"She's like a monkey without a beard," he said, with one of his short quick laughs. "As I thought before I went there, she's about ten or twelve years older than he. She's one of those dowdy little women, don't you know, dear, whose new clothes always look second-hand." Again came his short quick laugh. "She belongs to what geologists would call the antimacassar era. There's a dreadful Phyllis, or somebody else, in tapestry, framed over their sitting-room mantelshelf. She told me she worked it when she was young. But I ought not to laugh at the worthy soul. It is ungrateful of me; for I never tasted a more delicious omelette than she made for my breakfast. I must get her next time to give me the recipe for you, Nellie." He put his arms round his wife's shoulder and pressed his lips upon her smooth hair.
"I think, William," said she, "we are the happiest couple in England."
"And I'm sure of it," said he in a tone of full conviction.