文档介绍：MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS
MRS. LIRRIPER'S
LODGINGS
By Charles Dickens
1
MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS
CHAPTER I--HOW MRS.
LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE
BUSINESS
Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn't
a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me, my dear;
excuse the familiarity, but es natural to me in my own little room,
when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust, and I should be
truly thankful if they were all mankind, but such is not so, for have but a
Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the mantelpiece, and
farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second, however gentlemanly
the manners; nor is being of your own sex any safeguard, as I have reason,
in the form of sugar-tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman she
was) got me to run for a glass of water, on the plea of going to be confined,
which certainly turned out true, but it was in the Station-house.
Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand--situated midway between
the City and St. James's, and within five minutes' walk of the principal
places of public amusement--is my address. I have rented this house
many years, as the parish rate-books will testify; and I could wish my
landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself; but no, bless you, not a
half a pound of paint to save his life, nor so much, my dear, as a tile upon
the roof, though on your bended knees.
My dear, you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street
Strand advertised in Bradshaw's Railway Guide, and with the blessing of
Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there are who do not
think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap, and even
going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a blot in every
window and a coach and four at the door, but what will suit Wozenham's
lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham
having her opinions and me having mine, though when