"I dare say this will do for the present," said my landlady, and though my heart was in my mouth I compelled myself to agree.
"My terms, including meals and all extras, will be a pound a week," she added, and to that also, with a lump in my throat I assented, whereupon my landlady left me, saying luncheon was on and I could come downstairs when I was ready.
A talkative cockney chambermaid, with a good little face, brought me a fat blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and combed I found my way down to the dining-room.
What I expected to find there I hardly know. What I did find was a large chamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in need of refreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which some twenty persons sat eating, with the landlady presiding at the top.
The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed to me at that first sight to be dressed in every variety of out-of-date clothes, many of them rather shabby and some almost grotesque.
Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I entered, and I was so confused that I stood hesitating near the door until the landlady called to me.
"Come up here," she said, and when I had done so, and taken the seat by her side, which had evidently been reserved for me, she whispered:
"I don't think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What is it?"
I had no time to deliberate.
"O'Neill," I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising her voice, and addressing the company as if they had been members of her family, said: