For this he was to pay five-and-sixpence a week. Strangely enough the utter sordidness of the place did not strike a jarring note. He felt that he had dropped out of everything, that from henceforth he belonged to this world of Mrs. Ebbage, this Vauxhall-Bridge-Road world. After another lazy half-hour he got up and dressed, calling for the landlady when he was ready. The woman came in, carrying a tray with his breakfast. She was dirty and unkempt. Her face, where it was not black, was yellow, and stray wisps of grizzled hair blew round it--a face lined and shrewd. "Thort you'd like an 'errin'," she said. "Ebbage 'ad one before 'e went out. 'E's a pliceman, is Ebbage; 'as 'is beat down Kennington way." "Oh, thanks very much; very nice," said Gobion, amused to see her making the bed and lighting the fire while he ate. "Better 'ave the window open," she said. "Gets a bit smelly in the mornin', don't it?" She opened the window, breaking off her conversation to shout at one of the children in the yard. "Leave off playin' with Mr. Belper's socks, little nosey wretch yer; always nosin' about, little devil." "Ah, you don't know what kids are, you don't. Ebbage gets cussing at them sometimes. I sez to 'im, 'Touch the 'arp lightly, my deah! You want yer ugly 'edd tappin',' I sez. It makes 'im fairly med. 'Cummere,' I sez, 'call _your_self a man? Cummere if you want to knock anyone about. I could make a better yuman man than you, art of a lump o' coal.' Ah, 'e isn't what 'Olmes was, my first man. 'E _was_ a man--big, fat, fleshy devil, makin' 'is three quid a week regular. 'E was always good to me; 'e was fond of women. I've 'eard 'im say as a man ort to ave as many women as 'e could keep." Gobion soon got used to the woman, and even began to like her. She was kind to him in her way, saying she'd "had many a toff down on his luck with her," and she "noo the brand." He made friends with the husband--a big, black-haired man, stolid and obscene in his conversation, and they used to go to the public-house at the corner for a "drop of Scotch." Mr. Ebbage always called it "a drop," though it would have been better for him if he had never exceeded the twopennorth that did duty for the aforesaid generic name. After a fortnight Gobion settled down to a dull cheerless time, sordid and dreadful; and it was but rarely that a pain-flash disturbed his torpor. He used to play the old cracked piano in the evenings to the family. Mrs. Ebbage's nieces--giggling shop girls--would come in from College Street, and he would sit, with no tie and a dirty shirt, making vulgar love to "Trot" and "Fanny," while Ebbage read the football _Star_, and his wife cooked the sausages for supper. Sometimes in the long dull afternoons Lucy Ebbage, a girl of sixteen, used to come into his room and sit on his knee. He took a diseased pleasure in lowering himself to their level.