If one could but afford it, proceeded Mrs. Dorothea, I don't know a greater luxury than the peace of allowing oneself to be plundered without seeming to see it. Mrs. Dorothea had had so much experience of the discomforts of lodgings, that she had entertained some thoughts of trying a boarding-house; indeed she had dined at one, one day of the last week, by way of seeing how she should like the kind of thing; but the company had been so different from the refined society she had been living among lately at Lady Arden's, that she had felt quite uncomfortable. Her neighbour on one side had entertained the party in a loud, almost angry voice, the whole time of dinner, with accounts of accidents on rail-roads; she heard afterwards that he was a great holder of canal shares. Her neighbour on her other hand had quite disgusted her, by eating of every dish at table; at the same time that he had made her laugh, by mentioning to her, in confidence, as a sort of apology for his gluttony, that never having been much out of his own part of the country before, he wished while in such a fine new fangled place to get all the insight into the world he could. And after all, if eating a certain number of dinners give a knowledge of the law, why should not eating a certain number of dishes give a knowledge of the world. After this essay Mrs. Dorothea had given up the idea of a boarding-house. She had even began to turn her thoughts again towards her old lodging with the good carpet. Winter was now coming on and the heat of the oven would no longer be an objection. And she could stand out for the sofa, and the key to the chiffonier, and the drops to the chimney-lights, before she went into the lodging at all. To be sure the new carpet, that had made the room look so respectable, might be getting faded by this time; she would step in, however the next day and see how it looked, and inquire what the set could be had for during the winter months. As she formed this resolve a vague remembrance of past annoyances came over her mind, producing a sense of the utmost dreariness.