There was little to break the monotony of her life out of business hours at this period; and it was perhaps fortunate for her that she usually came home tired in the evening, wishing for rest rather than for distraction. There was nothing in that part of London to make walking attractive. The Regent's Park was close by, it is true, and thither she was accustomed to go for a walk on Sundays, except when one or other of her new acquaintances in the shop, living with her own people, invited her to dinner or tea. But on weekdays, especially in winter, when the streets were sloppy, and the atmosphere grey and damp, there was no inducement to take her out. In such conditions Marylebone is as depressing a district as any in London. The streets have a dull monotonous appearance, and the ancient unvenerable houses are grimy to blackness with the accumulation of soot on them. The inhabitants, especially in that portion of Marylebone where Fan lived, form a strange mixture. Artists, men of letters, sober tradesmen, artisans, day labourers, students, shop-assistants, and foreigners--dynamiters, adventurers, and waiters waiting for places--may all be found living in one short street. Bohemianism, vice, respectability, wealth and poverty, are jumbled together as in no other district in London. The modest wife, coming out of her door at ten in the morning to do her marketing, meets, face to face, her next neighbour standing at _her_ door, a jug in her hand, waiting for some late milkman to pass--a slovenly dame in a dressing-gown with half the buttons off, primrose-coloured hair loose on her back, and a porcelain complexion hastily dabbed on a yellow dissipated face. The Maryleboners (or bonites) being a Happy Family, in the menagerie sense, do not vex their souls about this condition of things; the well-fed and the hungry, the pure and the impure, are near together, but in soul they are just as far apart as elsewhere.