My salary was six or seven shillings a week--I think it was six at first, and seven afterwards--and I had to support myself on that money all the week. My breakfast was a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, and I kept another small loaf and a modicum of cheese to make my supper on at night. I was so young and childish, and so little qualified to undertake the whole charge of my existence, that often of a morning I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half price at the pastry-cooks' doors, and spent on that the money I should have kept for my dinner. On those days I either went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter to moisten what I had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I know I do not exaggerate the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning until night, a shabby child, and that I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond. Arrangements had been made by Mr. Murdstone for my lodging with Mr. Micawber--who took orders on commission for Murdstone and Grinby--and Mr. Micawber himself escorted me to his house in Windsor Terrace, City Road. Mr. Micawber was a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout, with no more hair upon his head than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face. His clothes were shabby, but he wore an imposing shirt-collar. He carried a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and an eyeglass hung outside his coat--for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very seldom looked through it, and couldn't see anything when he did. Arrived at his house in Windsor Terrace--which, I noticed, was shabby, like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could--he presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all young. "I never thought," said Mrs. Micawber, as she showed me my room at the top of the house at the back, "before I was married that I should ever find it necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all considerations of private feeling must give way." I said, "Yes, ma'am." "Mr. Micawber's difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present," said Mrs. Micawber, "and whether it is possible to bring him through them I don't know. If Mr. Micawber's creditors _will not_ give him time, they must take the consequences."