So, the next morning, pretending he had found at a lawyer's office in Chancery Lane a letter from his people, Dick told Lord George he must leave London immediately. Then, having sent for a hackney coach and taken a very friendly farewell of his lordship, he was driven to the starting-place of the Manchester stage. Being set down there, he hastened afoot, with his baggage, in search of cheap lodgings. These he presently found at a widow's house in George Street, which ran from the Strand towards the Thames. He engaged a room at sixteen shillings a week. The widow had a grown-up son employed by a mercer in the Strand, and from him Dick learned where to dispose of clothes most profitably, the son giving the name of a salesman in Monmouth Street, and adding, "Be sure, tell him 'twas I recommended you to him." Dick parted first with the new black suit he had so recently bought, and so found himself comparatively well in fund for his present station. Not finding his landlady's son a companion to his taste, and not making any acquaintances in the various coffee-houses, taverns, and eating-houses that he now frequented in and about Fleet Street and the Strand, he became afflicted with loneliness. A mere unnoticed mite among thousands, and utterly ignored by the hastening multitude, he sent his thoughts from the vast and crowded city, back to the bleak Maine wilderness, and he had a kind of homesick longing for the hearty comradeship of the time of freezing and starving there. One evening, determined to enliven himself and have another fling at pleasure at any cost, he went to Westminster Bridge afoot, and thence by boat up the Thames, to Vauxhall. He had no sooner paid his shilling, on entering the garden, than his spirits began to rise. The sound of the orchestra and of singers, heard while he passed by the little groves and the statues, brought back his zest for gay life, and this was redoubled as he came into the brilliantly lighted space around the orchestra, where the small boxes on either side were filled with people who sat eating or drinking at the tables, and where the walks were thronged with pleasure-seekers of every rank. He sat down on an empty bench in one of the boxes, thinking to drink a bottle of wine and listen to the music. Before the waiter had brought the wine, a gaily dressed young woman, handsome enough in her powder and paint, came with almost a rush to the vacant place at his side, and said, with a bold smile, "My dear sir, I can't endure to see so pretty a gentleman drink alone! I'm going to keep you company."