GIFFORD ROAD, Upton Rising, seemed to be composed of various architectural remnants which had been left over from other streets. No. 14 was a dour, gloomy-looking edifice built of a stone-work that showed up in lurid prominence the particular form of eczema from which it suffered. The front garden was large, with evidences of decayed respectability, including a broken-down five-barred gate and the remains of a lawn. The wooden erection at the side of the house may once have been a coach-shed.... A flight of stone steps, much chipped and scarred, led up to a massive front door, but the usual entrance was clearly the small door underneath the steps, which generally stood ajar.... In the basement window appeared the “apartments” card and the ubiquitously respectable aspidistra plant. Cats of all sizes and colours haunted the long, lank grass of the front garden, and at the back there was a noisy, unkempt chicken-run. Inside the tiny basement sitting-room Catherine tried to feel at home. The dried grasses and bric-à-brac on the mantelpiece did remind her somewhat of the front room at Kitchener Road, but the old faded photographs of the landlady’s relatives, most of them mercifully obscure, made her feel strange and foreign. A stuffed canary under a glass shroud surmounted the sideboard, and Catherine decided mentally that after she had been here awhile she would remove it to a less conspicuous position. A dull piety brooded over the room: there were floridly decorated texts on the walls, “I am the Bread of Life” over the doorway, and “Trust in the Lord” by the fireplace. The small bookshelf contained bound volumes of _The Quiver_ and various missionary society reports, as well as several antiquated volumes, of which _Jessica’s First Prayer_ was one, presented to the landlady, as the flyleaf showed, by a certain Sunday school in South London. A couple of pictures above the mantelpiece represented the Resurrection and the Ascension, and in these there was a prolific display of white-winged angels and stone slabs and halos like dinner-plates. On a November afternoon the effect of all this was distinctly chilly. And under the cushions of the sofa there were many, many copies of Sunday newspapers, both ancient and modern. Mrs. Carbass was a woman of cheerful respectability. She accepted Catherine as a lodger without any payment in advance. At first she was doubtful, but the production of the letter offering Catherine the situation at the Upton Rising Royal Cinema overruled her misgivings. She was apparently an occasional patron of this place of amusement. “Sometimes I goes,” she remarked. “Of a Sat’d’y night, gener’ly.... In the ninepennies,” she added, as if excusing herself.