This point settled, we proceeded to the Saltmarket; when my friend, who,
by the way, had now told me that his name was Lancaster, conducted me up
a dark, dirty-looking close, and finally into a house of anything but
respectable appearance. The furniture was scanty, and what was of it
much dilapidated: half the backs of half the chairs were broken off, the
tables were dirty and covered with stains and the circular marks of
drinking measures. A tattered sofa stood at one end of the apartment,
the walls were hung with paltry prints, and the small, old-fashioned,
dirty windows hung with dirtier curtains.
To crown all, we met, as we entered, a huge, blowzy, tawdrily dressed
woman, of most forbidding appearance, who, I was led to understand, was
the mistress of the house. Between this person and Mr. Lancaster I
thought I perceived a rapid secret signal pass as we came in, but was
not sure.
All this--namely, the appearance of the house and its mistress, the
shabbiness of the entrance to the former, the secret signal, etc.
etc.--surprised me a little; but I suspected nothing wrong--never dreamt
of it.
On our taking our seats in the apartment into which we had been shown, I
asked my good genius, Mr. Lancaster, what he would choose to drink.
He at once replied that he drank nothing but wine; spirits and malt
liquors, he said, always did him great injury.
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