Elcy had forestalled her mother’s injunctions, and before Mrs. Sandboys had finished what she had to say on the subject, had quitted the office, and was hastening along on her way to Craven-street. Winged by her anxiety, she was but a few minutes in reaching their former residence; but there, alas! a new disappointment awaited her. The partner of the hand and lodging-house of Mrs. Fokesell had suddenly returned from a long voyage, and after having passed a week in a state of almost helpless intoxication, and been deprived of his boots on the previous day by his superior moiety, with a view to prevent the possibility of his leaving the premises for more drink, and so reducing him to a state of sufficient sobriety to accompany her to the Great Exhibition, the sailor and his wife had left the house early that morning for the World’s Show, intent upon making a good long day of it. The maid of all work—and something more—had just been called away from the week’s washing, in which she was busily engaged, to brush the highlows of the Baron de Boltzoff, who occupied the drawing rooms, and had been obliged to throw them aside to give the newsboy the _Times_—which she was in the act of doing when Major Oldschool, in the parlours, desired her to bring up the tea-things; and no sooner had she filled the urn, than Mrs. Quinine, in the second floor, “touched her bell” to know whether she had got the hare down yet for her dinner; and while the maid was making up her fire for roasting it, down popped the medical student from the back attic with a request that she would just run up the street and get him half-an-ounce of “bird’s-eye,” for which she was about to start when Elcy’s double-knock “came to the door.” The girl, who had hurried up to answer the summons, and still held the knob of the street-door in her dirty hand covered with her apron, had no sooner informed the young lady of the absence of Mrs. Fokesell, than Elcy, who had borne up bravely against the previous misfortunes, suddenly lost all hope and courage, so that when she heard that there was no probability of the landlady returning home till late that evening, she could control her feelings no longer, and the pent-up tears burst from her eyes with double anguish. The maid, who had always been partial to Miss Elcy, and had taken a liking to her from the first, when she found that the young lady, “though she were a real lady bred and borned,” was not above thinking of how she could save a poor girl’s legs, was moved not a little by the sight of Miss Sandboys’ distress—and declared, as she led the staggering girl into the passage, and helped her to the hall chair, that she “couldn’t abear to see her take on so.”