civilized world again. Here were men with coats on their backs,
and ladies in gloves. My only fear was lest I might run up
against one or other whom I had known of old. But it was my
lucky day. I felt it in my bones. I was going to get this
berth; and sometimes I should be able to smell the wood-pavement
on the old boy's errands; perhaps he would insist on skimming
over it in his bath-chair, with me behind.

I felt quite nervous when I reached the flats. They were a small
pile in a side street, and I pitied the doctor whose plate I saw
upon the palings before the ground-floor windows; he must be in
a very small way, I thought. I rather pitied myself as well.
I had indulged in visions of better flats than these. There
were no balconies. The porter was out of livery. There was no
lift, and my invalid on the third floor! I trudged up, wishing
I had never lived in Mount Street, and brushed against a
dejected individual coming down. A full-blooded young fellow in
a frock-coat flung the right door open at my summons.

"Does Mr. Maturin live here?" I inquired.

"That's right," said the full-blooded young man, grinning all
over a convivial countenance.

"I--I've come about his advertisement in the Daily Mail."

"You're the thirty-ninth," cried the blood; "that was the
thirty-eighth you met upon the stairs, and the day's still
young. Excuse my staring at you. Yes, you pass your prelim.,
and can come inside; you're one of the few. We had most just