The Argosy — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

116 The Story of Dorothy Grape. Sold up?” “Ves, sir. Her lodging-letting fell off—this neighbourhood’s not what it was: people like to get further up Islington way—and she was badly off for a long while, could not pay her rent, or anything, so at last the landlord was obliged to sell her up. At least, that’s what we heard after we came here, but the house lay empty for some months between. I did not hear what became of her.” , The people at the next house could not tell anything; they were fresh comers also ; and the Squire stood in a quandary. I thought of Pitt the surgeon; he was sure-to know ; and ran off to his surgery in the next street. Changes seemed to be everywhere. Pitt’s small surgery had given place to a chemist’s shop. The chemist stood behind his counter in a white apron. Pitt? Oh, Pitt had taken to a practice further off, and drove his brougham. ‘ Mrs. Mapping ?” added the chemist, in further answer to me. ‘Qh, yes, she lives still in the same terrace. She came to grief at No. 60, poor woman, and lodges now at No. 32. Same side of the way; this end.” | No. 32 had its plate on the door: ‘“ Miss Kester, dressmaker” : and Miss Kester herself—a neat little woman, with a reserved, not to say sour, face and manner, and a cloud of pins sticking out of her brown waistband—answered the knock. She sent us up to a small back room at the top of the house. Mrs. Mapping sat sewing near a fireless grate, her bed in one corner ; she looked very ill. I had thought her thin enough before ; she was a shadow now. ‘The blue eyes had a piteous look in them, the cheeks a red-leafed hectic. “Ves,” she said, in answer to the Squire, her voice faint and her cough catching her every other minute, “‘it was a sad misfortune for me to be turned out of my house; it nearly broke my heart. The world is full of trouble, sir.” ‘“* How long is it since?” ‘‘ Nearly eighteen months, sir. Miss Kester had this room to let, and I came into it. It is quiet and cheap; only half a crown a week.” “And how do you get the half-crown?” questioned the Squire. * And your dinner and breakfast—how do you get that?” Mrs. Mapping passed her trembling fingers across her face before she answered. ‘“‘T’m sorry to have to tell of these things, sir. I’m sorry you have found me out in my poverty. When I think of the old days at home, the happy and plentiful days when poor mother was living, and what a different life mine might have been but for the dreadful marriage I made, I—I can hardly bear up against it. I’m sure I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for giving way.” For the tears were streaming down her thin cheeks. The Squire set up a cough on his own account; I went to the window and looked down at some grimy back-gardens, ECORNIELIOO KS. (E@)