The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 193: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XIII THE LODGING - HOUSE In Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, a respectable lodging-house was kept by a widow woman named Macaulay. She was about fifty years of age, short and stout, yet bustling and active; very untidy and dirty in her appearance during all the earlier part of the day, but dressed out in a very fine style for the afternoon and evening. She was a Scotch woman, exceedingly thrifty, and bent upon saving a penny here and a penny there to the utmost of her power. She therefore assisted the servants in the housework and the kitchen; hence her morning’s untidiness. But when the onerous duties of the day were over, Mrs. Macaulay sported her silk gown, her cap with pink ribbons, her gold watch and chain, and seated herself in her neat little ground floor parlour, ready to receive any of her neighbours who might chance to drop in for a chat. Though parsimonious even to meanness, — beating down her drudges of servants to the lowest possible amount of wages, — she was an honest woman in her way, and made as little free with her lodgers’ tea and sugar, butter, and other comestibles, as the most conscientious of her class. Neither did she altogether pos- sess a bad heart, though it was steeled with many defences against accessibility with regard to money matters. She would not mind sitting up all night long to nurse a sick lodger, but she would not at all like to hear the lodger, when rent-day came around, make an excuse for non-payment. Her landlord came to her regularly for his rent, and she therefore must have hers. The tax-gatherers were equally exact in their periodical visits, and she was compelled, as she alleged, to require a corresponding punctuality on the part of her tenants. Such was Mrs. Macaulay, — a woman with 166 GOMiicdooks (E(0)