In one of the worst lodgings in such a mews as we have faintly endeavoured to describe, in a dirty, comfortless room, bare of furniture, and to which laborious access is obtained by a dilapidated wooden staircase, sits our old acquaintance Gingham, now Mrs. Blacke, but who will never be known to “the families in which she lived” by any other than her maiden patronymic. Though in her best days a lady of no fascinating exterior, she is decidedly altered for the worse since we saw her at St. Swithin’s, and is now, without question, a hard-featured and repulsive-looking woman. She has lost the “well-to-do” air, which sits more easily on those who live at “housekeeping” than on those “who find themselves,” and everything about her betrays a degree of poverty, if not of actual want, sadly repugnant to the habits of an orderly upper-servant in a well-regulated establishment. Of all those who sink to hardships after having “seen better days,” none bear privation so ill as this particular rank. They have neither the determination and energy of “the gentle,” nor the happy carelessness and bodily vigour of the labouring class. It is lamentable to watch the gradual sinking of a once respectable man, who has been tempted, by the very natural desire of becoming independent, to leave “service” and set up on his own account. From his boyhood he has been fed, housed, and clothed, without a thought or care of his own, till he has spread into the portly, grave, ponderous official, whom not even his master’s guests would think of addressing save by the respectful title of “Mister.” He has saved a “pretty bit o’ money”; and on giving warning, announces his long-concealed marriage to the housekeeper, who has perhaps saved a little more. Between them they muster a _very_ few hundred pounds; and on this inexhaustible capital they determine to set up for themselves. If he takes a public-house, it is needless to dwell on the almost inevitable catastrophe. But whatever the trade or speculation on which he embarks, he has everything to learn; education cannot be had without paying for it; business connections cannot be made--they must _grow_. Those are positive hardships to _him_, which could scarcely be felt as wants by others of his own sphere, who had not always lived, as he has, on the fat of the land. Discontent and recrimination creep into the household. The wife makes home uncomfortable, and “the husband goes to the beer-shop.” The money dwindles--the business fails--fortunate if the family do not increase. “Trade _never_ was so bad,” and it soon becomes a question of assignees and ten shillings in the pound. The man himself is honest, and it cuts him to the heart. Only great speculators can rise, like the Phoenix, in gaudier plumage after every fresh insolvency; and hunger begins to stare our once portly acquaintance in the face. At last he is completely “sold up,” and if too old to go again into service, he will probably think