I shouldn't wonder
if I could find you a lodger for those top-rooms.'
'And who's that? No children, mind.'
Sidney told her what he could of the old man. Of Jane he only said
that she had hitherto lived with the Hewetts' landlady, and was now
going to be removed by her grandfather, having just got through an
illness. Dire visions of infection at once assailed Mrs. Byass;
impossible to admit under the same roof with her baby a person who
had just been ill. This scruple was, however, overcome; the two
rooms at the top of the house--unfurnished--had been long
vacant, owing to fastidiousness in Mr. and Mrs. Byass, since their
last lodger, after a fortnight of continuous drunkenness, broke the
windows, ripped the paper off the walls, and ended by trying to set
fire to the house. Sidney was intrusted with an outline treaty, to
be communicated to Mr. Snowdon.
This discussion was just concluded when Mr. Samuel Byass presented
himself--a slender, large-headed young man, with very light hair
cropped close upon the scalp, and a foolish face screwed into an
expression of facetiousness. He was employed in some clerkly
capacity at a wholesale stationer's in City Road.
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