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LXXIX

hilip went up to London a couple of days before the ses-
Psion began in order to find himself rooms. He hunted
about the streets that led out of the Westminster Bridge
Road, but their dinginess was distasteful to him; and at last
he found one in Kennington which had a quiet and old-world
air. It reminded one a little of the London which Thackeray
knew on that side of the river, and in the Kennington Road,
through which the great barouche of the Newcomes must
have passed as it drove the family to the West of London, the
plane-trees were bursting into leaf. The houses in the street
which Philip fixed upon were two-storied, and in most of
the windows was a notice to state that lodgings were to let.
He knocked at one which announced that the lodgings were
unfurnished, and was shown by an austere, silent woman
four very small rooms, in one of which there was a kitchen
range and a sink. The rent was nine shillings a week. Philip
did not want so many rooms, but the rent was low and he
wished to settle down at once. He asked the landlady if she
could keep the place clean for him and cook his breakfast,
but she replied that she had enough work to do without that;
and he was pleased rather than otherwise because she inti-
mated that she wished to have nothing more to do with him
than to receive his rent. She told him that, if he inquired at
the grocer’s round the corner, which was also a post office,

0 Of Human Bondage