Elsworth took lodgings in Lindsay Street, just opposite Mrs. Harper’s house. He soon became attached to little Murphy for his genial disposition and cheerful heart, and it was not long before he found some attraction in the lively company surrounding him. His own landlady was serious and prim, and rigorously excluded the fast set of men at the hospital. “What suited Mrs. Harper wouldn’t suit her,” she used to say; “and if medical students couldn’t behave themselves like other folk, she wouldn’t have anything to do with ’em.” So it was only quiet men who went to live at Mrs. White’s—men who kept good hours, and didn’t kick up rows in their rooms; “she wouldn’t have it at no price.” She went to the little Baptist chapel in Bethesda Court, hard by, and was a good, worthy woman, who made all about her the better for the faith she professed; and though her grammar was defective, and her notions crude, her religion made, as Rowland Hill remarked, “even her cat the better for it,” for her feline companion never drank her lodgers’ brandy, nor smoked their cigars, “nor took aught that wasn’t his’n.” She kept her rooms, as became a good Baptist, beautifully clean; and a man who wanted to read hard, and be quiet at his work, found it a privilege to be cared for by Mrs. White. Here, when not at the schools, Elsworth was almost always to be found; and human bones were scattered grimly about the room. A valuable microscope, with a large cabinet of preparations and sections, and a well-stocked bookcase of works of anatomy and physiology, gave the sitting-room a learned aspect, which of itself seemed to repress the rising desire of any young visitor to invite the occupant to “a shindy.” CHAPTER V. THE BEADLE AND THE THEATRE. ’Tis part of my proud fate To lecture to as many thick-skulled youths As please, each day, to throng the theatre. —_Browning_ (“_Paracelsus_”). O Youth and Joy, your airy tread Too lightly springs by Sorrow’s bed; Your keen eye-glances are too bright, Too restless for a sick man’s sight. —_Keble._