Langly, as has been said, found it necessary to secure cheaper lodgings, and this was his own fault as much as it was the fault of his limited income. A London landlady in the more impoverished districts carries on a constant fight against circumstances. Her tenants pay her as seldom and as little as they can; sometimes they disappear, and she loses her money; while if they stay, there are no chances of extracting extras, those elastic exactions which often waft a West End boarding-house keeper to affluence. Terms are close and invariably inclusive. The organist’s conduct towards his numerous and successive landladies admits of no defence. These good women, when he had taken his departure, spoke bitterly of his sneaky and deceptive ways, as indeed they had just cause to do. On first arriving at a new place, he was so apologetic and anxious not to give any trouble; so evidently a person who did not really live in bustling, elbowing London, but in some dreamy mental world of his own, that his good hostess, merely as an experiment and entirely without prejudice, as the legal man puts it, tentatively placed on his bill for the week some trifling item, that, strictly speaking, was merely placed there to be taken off again, if complaint were made, or allowed to stand if overlooked. Of course, under these circumstances, the landlady was in expectation of a row, during which epithets reflecting upon her financial probity might be hurled at her, when she, with voluble excuses for her unfortunate mistake, would correct the error and assure the lodger that such a thing would not occur again. After a few essays of this kind, all perfectly just and proper in a commercial country, and in fact the only means of discovering to what extent the lodger could be depended upon as an asset, life would flow on with that calm serenity which adds so much to the comfort and enjoyment of a furnished apartment in the Borough or a palace overlooking the Park. But Langly never took a straightforward course with his landladies. Instead of finding fault at the proper time, he meekly said nothing and paid the bills as long as he was able--bills which mounted higher and higher each week. Thus the deluded woman had no chance, as she could not be expected to know when she had reached the limit of his weekly income. At last the organist would take his bundle of music under his arm, and would sneak away like a thief in the night, to search for a cheaper abode, after leaving a week’s money in lieu of notice, wrapped in a piece of paper, in a conspicuous place, for he had never had the courage to face a landlady and baldly tell her he was going.