 in the Mews, made the
evening doleful. Rickety dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity to
hold nothing comfortably except a dismal smell, looked like the last result of
the great mansions' breeding in-and-in; and, where their little supplementary
bows and balconies were supported on thin iron columns, seemed to be
scrofulously resting upon crutches. Here and there a Hatchment, with the whole
science of Heraldry in it, loomed down upon the street, like an Archbishop
discoursing on Vanity. The shops, few in number, made no show; for popular
opinion was as nothing to them. The pastrycook knew who was on his books, and in
that knowledge could be calm, with a few glass cylinders of dowager
peppermint-drops in his window, and half-a-dozen ancient specimens of
currant-jelly. A few oranges formed the greengrocer's whole concession to the
vulgar mind. A single basket made of moss, once containing plovers' eggs, held
all that the poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in those streets
seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to be gone out to
dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to. On the
doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright parti-coloured plumage and
white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and butlers, solitary men
of recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers.
The roll of carriages in the Park was done for the day; the street lamps were
lighting; and wicked little grooms in the tightest-fitting garments, with twists
in their legs answering to the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs,
chewing straws and exchanging fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out
with the carriages, and who were so associated with splendid equipages, that it
looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without them,
accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there was a retiring
public-house which did not require to be supported on the shoulders of the
people, and where gentlemen out of livery were not much wanted.
    This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their inquiries.
Nothing was there, or anywhere, known of such a person as Miss Wade, in
connection with the street they sought. It was one of the parasite streets;
long, regular, narrow, dull, and gloomy; like a brick and mortar funeral. They
inquired at several little area gates, where a dejected youth stood spiking his
chin on the summit of a precipitous little
