She opened the door and admitted him into a dark, narrow passage. He had to squeeze himself against the wall to allow her to pass him. Then she surveyed him critically again, with her arms akimbo and her head a little on one side.
"I reckon you've got a name," she surmised. "What is it?"
"You can tell Mr. Bartlezzi that a gentleman from abroad desires to speak with him," he answered. "My name is immaterial. Will you accept this?" he added, holding out a half-crown timidly toward her.
She grabbed it from him, and turned it over incredulously in the semi-darkness. There was no deception about it; it was indeed a half-crown--the first she had ever been given in her life.
She dropped a rude sort of curtsey, and, opening the door of a room, half ushered, half pushed him in. Then she went to the foot of the stairs, the coin tightly clinched in her hand, and he heard her call out----
"Master! There's a gent here from furrin parts has wants you, which 'is name his immaterial. 'E's in the parlor."
There was a growl in reply, and then silence. The handmaiden, her duty discharged, shuffled off to the lower regions. The visitor was left alone.
He looked around him in deep and increasing disgust. The walls of the little room into which he had been shown were bare, save for a few cheap chromos and glaring oleographs of the sort distributed by grocers and petty tradespeople at Christmas. A cracked looking-glass, with a dirty gilt frame, tottered upon the mantelpiece. The furniture was scanty, and of the public-house pattern, and there was a strong nauseous odor of stale tobacco smoke and beer. A small piano stood in one corner, the cheapest of its kind, and maintaining an upright position only by means of numerous props. One leg tilted in the air was supported by two old and coverless volumes of a novel, and another was casterless. The carpet was worn into shreds, and there was no attempt to conceal or mend the huge ravages which time had made in it. The ceiling was cracked and black with smoke, and the faded paper was hanging down from the top of the wall. There was not a single article or spot in the room on which the eye could rest with pleasure. It was an interior which matched the exterior. Nothing worse could be said about it.