From room to room of the desolate place we went, to find every window closely shut. There was the pleasant prospect, beyond the tiny square of grass-grown earth called a garden, of the blank end wall of the row of houses in the next street. Over the wall, next door, an attempt had been made to brighten the prospect; but the plants looked melancholy, and a Virginia creeper that ought to have been displaying its gorgeous autumnal tints was evidently suffering from a severe bilious attack, due to low spirits, bad drainage, and a clay soil. The very sparrows on the ledges were moulting, and appeared depressed; and on going higher up, there was a blank hideous cistern in one of the attics, that looked so much like a sarcophagus on a humid principle, and suggested such horrors of some day finding a suicidal servant-maid within, that any lingering ideas of recommending the house vanished like dirty snow-crystals before a pelting rain. "It's a very convenient house," said the old gentleman. "And will let some day at a far higher rent," piped the old lady. "You'd better come down to the breakfast-room now," said the old gentleman. "And see the kitchen too," echoed the old lady. So I went down--to find, as I expected, the breakfast-room showing a cloudy mountainous line of damp on the paper for about two feet above the wainscot; and here again the window was closely shut, and the strange mephitic odour of damp and exhausted air stronger than ever. This apartment was the one utilised by the old couple for bed and sitting-room combined, and their spare furniture was spread neatly over it, according to the homely old rule of "making the most of things." I finished my inspection, with the old folks most eager in their praise of all, and when I pointed to the damp the old gentleman exclaimed-- "Oh! you'll find that in all the houses about here. It rises up the wall, you see." "Yes, from bad building," I answered. "But it's much worse at the house opposite," said the old lady. "Where the tenant died?" I said. "Yes," she answered innocently enough. "Why, you seem anxious to let the house," I said smiling. "Well, yes," said the old gentleman, combing his few hairs with one end of his spectacles. "You see, the agents like us to let the houses; and if we're in one very long--" "He don't like it," said the old lady. "Then you often have to change?" "It all depends; sometimes we've been in houses where they've been let in a week." "Not in new neighbourhoods," said the old lady; "people's shy of coming to the very new places. You see they're only just run up, and the roads ain't made." "Ah!" said the old gentleman, "sometimes the roads ain't made till the houses are all let." "And people often won't take the houses till the roads are made," said the old lady. "So sometimes we're a year or two in a place. People are so particular about damp, you see," said the old gentleman. "And many of the houses are damp?" I asked inquiringly.