The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows the discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in Queen Anne’s and George the First’s time; and while some of the neighbouring streets, to wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street, and others, contain mansions fairly coped with stone, with little obelisks before the doors, and great extinguishers wherein the torches of the nobility’s running footmen were put out a hundred and thirty or forty years ago:—houses which still remain abodes of the quality, and where you shall see a hundred carriages gather of a public night; Walpole Street has quite faded away into lodgings, private hotels, doctors’ houses, and the like; nor is No. 23 (Ridley’s) by any means the best house in the street. The parlour, furnished and tenanted by Miss Cann as has been described; the first floor, Bagshot, Esq., M.P.; the second floor, Honeyman; what remains but the garrets, and the ample staircase and the kitchens? and the family being all put to bed, how can you imagine there is room for any more inhabitants? And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the other personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you have no idea yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At night, when Honeyman comes in, he finds on the hall-table three wax bedroom candles—his own, Bagshot’s, and another. As for Miss Cann, she is locked into the parlour in bed long ago, her stout little walking-shoes being on the mat at the door. At 12 o’clock at noon, sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and 3—long after Bagshot is gone to his committees, and little Cann to her pupils—a voice issues from the very topmost floor, from a room where there is no bell; a voice of thunder calling out “Slavey! Julia! Julia, my love! Mrs. Ridley!” And this summons not being obeyed, it will not unfrequently happen that a pair of trousers enclosing a pair of boots with iron heels, and known by the name of the celebrated Prussian General who came up to help the other christener of boots at Waterloo, will be flung down from the topmost story, even to the marble floor of the resounding hall. Then the boy Thomas, otherwise called Slavey, may say, “There he goes again;” or Mrs. Ridley’s own back-parlour bell rings vehemently, and Julia the cook will exclaim, “Lor, it’s Mr. Frederick.” If the breeches and boots are not understood, the owner himself appears in great wrath dancing on the upper story; dancing down to the lower floor; and loosely enveloped in a ragged and flowing _robe de chambre_. In this costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman’s apartment, where that meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel or a newspaper; dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it, and warm himself there; dance up to the cupboard where his reverence keeps his sherry, and help himself to a glass.