Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 304: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXIX THE AMAZON AND TIM MEAGLES WHILE the preceding conversation was in progress at the lodgings of Mr. Page and his bride in Southwark, an interview of a scarcely less interesting nature took place between Lady Letitia Lade and Tim Meagles. This gentleman, as we have already intimated, occupied apartments in Jermyn Street. He had a handsome parlour on the first floor, a bedchamber communicating therewith, and a snug little dressing-room adjoining. An elderly widow kept the house, in which there were two or three other lodgers of the male sex; but Mr. Meagles was the one to whom she devoted her best attention, — Mr. Meagles was the pink of perfection in her eyes, — and if ever she wished to convey her ideas of a true gentleman, it was Mr. Meagles whom she held up as an example. The fact was that Tim paid her liberally, gave little trouble, and was of such a happy and contented disposition that, to use Mrs. Piggleberry’s own words, “‘ he never was put out by nothink.’’ He appeared quite unconscious of the trifling fact that he found tea, sugar, butter, bread, and even meat, for his landlady and her servant as well as for himself and his page. If he had a ham for breakfast, he never was astonished to learn on the fourth or fifth morning that it was all gone, and if he had a large joint served up for his dinner one day, he did not exhibit the least amaze- ment the next when Mrs. Piggleberry unblushinegly told him to his face that there was nothing in the house and requested him to give his orders. As regularly as possible every six months the worthy woman represented to him that he must have another set of a dozen shirts; and Meagles invariably tossed down the requisite amount, without a 287 GOMmiGcdooks (C©)