The fact is, I had seen, not long before, a lady going in and out of houses, as I had done on the night of my arrival, and it occurred to me that I might pursue her, and persuade her to take my place in Holly House and buy the headless fowl. I walked for nearly an hour before I was rewarded with a glimpse of my victim's grey dress whisking round the corner of Pump Street. I approached, and, with a smile that was intended to be a justification in itself, I explained my somewhat unusual mission. She was rather unreceptive at first; she thought evidently that I was to have a percentage on her, if I succeeded in capturing her alive and delivering her to Mrs. Hobbs; but she was very weary and discouraged, and finally fell in with my plans. She accompanied me home, was introduced to Mrs. Hobbs, and engaged my rooms from the following day. As she had a sister, she promised to be a more lucrative incumbent than I; she enjoyed ordering food in a raw state, did not care for views, and thought purple clematis vines only a shelter for insects: so every one was satisfied, and I most of all when I wrestled with Mrs. Hobb's itemised bill for two nights and one day. Her weekly account must be rolled on a cylinder, I should think, like the list of Don Juan's amours, for the bill of my brief residence beneath her roof was quite three feet in length, each of the following items being set down every twenty-four hours:-- Apartments. Ale. Bath. Kidney beans. Candles. Vegetable marrow. Tea. Eggs. Butter. Bread. Cut off joint. Plums. Potatoes. Chops. Kipper. Rasher. Salt. Pepper. Vinegar. Sugar. Washing towels. Lights. Kitchen fire. Sitting-room fire. Attendance. Boots. The total was seventeen shillings and sixpence, and as Mrs. Hobbs wrote upon it, in her neat English hand, 'Received payment, with respectful thanks,' she carefully blotted the wet ink, and remarked casually that service was not included in 'attendance,' but that she would leave the amount to me. Chapter XVIII. I meet Mrs. Bobby. Mrs. Bobby and I were born for each other, though we have been a long time in coming together. She is the pink of neatness and cheeriness, and she has a broad, comfortable bosom on which one might lay a motherless head, if one felt lonely in a stranger land. I never look at her without remembering what the poet Samuel Rogers said of Lady Parke: 'She is so good that when she goes to heaven she will find no difference save that her ankles will be thinner and her head better dressed.'