And there it was. A narrow thoroughfare, not wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other, with the words "Lamb's Terrace" faintly discernible on the crumbling stones.
"Of course we will go on," replied my wife. "What did we come out for? And after the trouble we have had to get here!"
We turned at once into the narrow lane. On the right-hand side was a gloomy house, untenanted. Beyond this was a long wall, very much out of repair. On the opposite side there were no houses at all, but another long wall, also very much out of repair. I searched for the number of the gloomy untenanted house, but could not see one, and my wife suggested that the house we wanted was lower down. We went lower down, and passed the gloomy house a distance of fifty or sixty yards, between the said walls. So still and deathlike was everything around, and so secluded did Lamb's Terrace appear to be that I regarded it as being not only lost to society, but almost out of the world.
I glanced at my wife, and saw on her face no traces of disappointment. Her spirits were not so easily dashed as mine.
Having traversed these fifty or sixty yards we came to the end of the right-hand wall. Adjoining it was a large building, in rueful harmony with all the depressing characteristics of the neighborhood. The house was approached by a front garden choked up with weeds and rank grass, and inclosed by rusty and broken railings; at the end of this garden was a flight of stone steps. The gate creaked on its hinges as I pushed it open, and a prolonged wheeze issued from the joints; the sound was ludicrously and painfully human, and resembled that which might have been uttered by a rheumatic old woman in pain. My wife pushed past me, and I followed her up the flight of stone steps.
"There is a number on the door," she said, tiptoeing. "Yes, here it is, 79, almost rubbed out."
"Numbers 1 to 78," I grimly remarked, "must be somewhere round the corner, if there is any round the corner in the neighborhood; they are perhaps two or three miles off."
"My dear," said my wife bravely, "don't be prejudiced. Here is the house; what we have to do is to see whether it will suit us."
"You would not care to go into it alone," I said.