“I say, can you let a lodging¹?”

These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout² and elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy³ coffee-house down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse.

“Oh yus,” she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not approximating the standard of affluence⁴ required by her house.

I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint⁵ of sickly tea in silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out of my pocket. The expected result was produced.

“Yus, sir,” she at once volunteered; “I ’ave nice lodgin’s you’d likely tyke a fancy to. Back from a voyage, sir?”

“How much for a room?” I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.

She looked me up and down with frank surprise. “I don’t let rooms, not to my reg’lar lodgers⁶, much less casuals.”

“Then I’ll have to look along a bit,” I said, with marked disappointment.

But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen. “I can let you have a nice bed in with two hother men,” she urged. “Good, respectable men, an’ steady.”

“But I don’t want to sleep with two other men,” I objected.

“You don’t ’ave to. There’s three beds in the room, an’ hit’s not a very small room.”

“How much?” I demanded.

“’Arf a crown a week, two an’ six, to a regular lodger⁷. You’ll fancy the men, I’m sure. One works in the ware’ouse, an’ ’e’s been with me two years now. An’ the hother’s bin

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