But there was no time to fret over that because the cab man called down to me through his hole. He might as well have been talking in a foreign language, but did not sound happy, so I gave him the two half crowns, thinking: well, he'll give me some of it back, at any rate. Having taken the money, though, he just opened the door. I thought: he'll hand over the change when I've stood down; it's probably that way about with hansoms. I climbed down in front of a pharmacy that seemed entirely given over to selling Vianola Soap, and watched the cab man turn in a circle, thinking: as the horse turns he'll count out the change, but the fact of the matter was that he was lighting his pipe as the horse walked, and then he was gone altogether, and the whole of my five shillings with him. I did not have much time to worry about this, though, because I now saw a sign that hit me like a bullet: Hercules Court.

I cannot now say how, on the journey down from Yorkshire, I had thought my lodge and my landlady might actually be because any memory of it has been blotted out by the thought of how they actually were. The lodge was on a corner, half in Lower Marsh and half in Hercules Court. The wall facing Lower Marsh was covered in posters, all saying, 'Smoke Duke of Wellington Cigars', except for one going out on a limb with 'Stower's Lime Juice, No Musty Flavour'. I knocked on the door of this giant cigar box and a lady opened it, releasing a smell of wash day. She was certainly not from the common run of landlady, and while she did not look well-to-do, she looked clever – her faded skirts did not matter. Her eyes were very large and yet she herself was very small, and that to me was the right way about. It would have been very easy to lift her up, I thought, but I perceived instantly that nobody would ever dare to try.