It seems to be rather a new
precinct of the city, and the houses, though ranged along a continuous
street, are but a brick border of the green fields in the rear.
Occasionally you get a glimpse of this country aspect between two houses;
but the street itself, even with its little grass-plots and bits of
shrubbery under the front windows, is as ugly as it can be made. Some of
the houses are better than I have described; but the brick used here in
building is very unsightly in hue and surface.
Betimes in the morning the Exhibition omnibuses begin to trundle along,
and pass at intervals of two and a half minutes through the day,--immense
vehicles constructed to carry thirty-nine passengers, and generally with
a good part of that number inside and out. The omnibuses are painted
scarlet, bordered with white, have three horses abreast, and a conductor
in a red coat. They perform the journey from this point into town in
about half an hour; and yesterday morning, being in a hurry to get to the
railway station, I found that I could outwalk them, taking into account
their frequent stoppages.
We have taken the whole house (except some inscrutable holes, into which
the family creeps), of respectable people, who never took lodgers until
this juncture. Their furniture, however, is of the true lodging-house
pattern, sofas and chairs which have no possibility of repose in them;
rickety tables; an old piano and old music, with "Lady Helen Elizabeth"
somebody's name written on it.
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