Chapter XVII. Short stops and long bills.



The manner of my changing from West to North Belvern was this. When
I had been two days at Holly House, I reflected that my sitting-room
faced the wrong way for the view, and that my bedroom was dark and
not large enough to swing a cat in. Not that there was the remotest
necessity of my swinging cats in it, but the figure of speech is
always useful. Neither did I care to occupy myself with the
perennial inspection and purchase of raw edibles, when I wished to
live in an ideal world and paint a great picture. Mrs. Hobbs would
come to my bedside in the morning and ask me if I would like to buy
a fowl. When I looked upon the fowl, limp in death, with its
headless neck hanging dejectedly over the edge of the plate, its
giblets and kidneys lying in immodest confusion on the outside of
itself, and its liver 'tucked under its wing, poor thing,' I never
wanted to buy it. But one morning, in taking my walk, I chanced
upon an idyllic spot: the front of the whitewashed cottage
embowered in flowers, bird-cages built into these bowers, a little
notice saying 'Canaries for Sale,' and an English rose of a baby
sitting in the path stringing hollyhock buds. There was no
apartment sign, but I walked in, ostensibly to buy some flowers. I
met Mrs. Bobby, loved her at first sight, the passion was
reciprocal, and I wheedled her into giving me her own sitting-room
and the bedroom above it. It only remained now for me to break my
projected change of residence to my present landlady, and this I
distinctly dreaded. Of course Mrs. Hobbs said, when I timidly
mentioned the subject, that she wished she had known I was leaving