, sundry ornaments here and there made
strong denial of lodging-house affinity. It was at once laboratory, study, and
dwelling-room. Two large cabinets, something the worse for transportation, alone
formed a link between this abode and the old home at Twybridge. Books were not
numerous, and a good microscope seemed to be the only scientific instrument of
much importance. On door-pegs hung a knapsack, a botanist's vasculum, and a
geologist's wallet.
    A round table was spread with the materials of supper, and here again an
experienced lodger must have bestowed contemplative scrutiny, for no hand of
common landlady declared itself in the arrangement. The cloth was spotless, the
utensils tasteful and carefully disposed. In a bowl lay an appetising salad,
ready for mingling; a fragment of Camembert cheese was relieved upon a setting
of green leafage; a bottle of ale, with adjacent corkscrew, stood beside the
plate; the very loaf seemed to come from no ordinary baker's, or was made to
look better than its kin by the fringed white cloth in which it nestled.
    The custom of four years had accustomed Peak to take these things as a
matter of course, yet he would readily have admitted that they were
extraordinary enough. Indeed, he even now occasionally contrasted this state of
comfort with the hateful experiences of his first six years in London. The
subject of lodgings was one of those on which (often intemperate of speech) he
spoke least temperately. For six years he had shifted from quarter to quarter,
from house to house, driven away each time by the hateful contact of vulgarity
in every form, - by foulness and dishonesty, by lying, slandering, quarrelling,
by drunkenness, by brutal vice, - by all abominations that distinguish the
lodging-letter of the metropolis. Obliged to practise extreme economy, he could
not take refuge among self-respecting people, or at all events had no luck in
endeavouring to find such among the poorer working-class. To a man of Godwin's
idiosyncrasy the London poor were of necessity abominable, and it anguished him
to be forced to live among them.
    Rescue came at last, and in a very unexpected way. Resident in the more open
part of Bermondsey (winter mornings made a long journey to Rotherhithe
intolerable), he happened to walk one day as far as Peckham Rye, and was there
attracted by the shop window of a herbalist. He entered to make a purchase, and
got into conversation with Mr. Button, a middle-aged man of bright intelligence
and more reading than could be
