Living in lodgings¹, not temporarily, but permanently³, sitting down to make one's only "home" in Mrs. Jones's parlor⁴ or Mrs. Smith's first floor, of which not a stick or a stone that one looks at is one's own, and whence one may be evicted⁵ or evade⁶, with a week's notice or a week's rent, any day—this sort of life is natural and even delightful⁷ to some people. There are those who, like strawberry plants, are of such an errant disposition⁸, that grow them where you will, they will soon absorb all the pleasantness of their habitat, and begin casting out runners elsewhere; may, if not frequently transplanted, would actually wither⁹ and die. Of such are the pioneers of society—the emigrants¹⁰, the tourists, the travelers round the world; and great is the advantage the world derives¹¹ from them, active, energetic, and impulsive¹² as they are. Unless, indeed, their talent for incessant¹³ locomotion¹⁴ degenerates¹⁵ into rootless restlessness, and they remain forever rolling stones, gathering¹⁶ no moss¹⁷, and acquiring gradually a smooth, hard surface, which adheres to nothing, and to which nobody dare venture to adhere.  
But there are others possessing in a painful degree this said quality of adhesiveness¹⁸, to whom the smallest change is obnoxious¹⁹; who like drinking out of a particular cup, and sitting in a particular chair; to whom even a variation in the position of furniture is unpleasant. Of course, this peculiarity²⁰ has its bad side, and yet it is not in itself mean or ignoble²¹. For is not adhesiveness, faithfulness, constancy—call it what you will—at the root of all citizenship²², clanship, and family love? Is it not the same feeling which, granting they remain at all, makes old friendships dearer than any new? Nay²³, to go to the very sacredest and closest bond, is it not that which makes an old man see to the last in his old wife's faded face the beauty which perhaps nobody ever saw except himself, but which he sees and delights in still, simply because it is familiar and his own.
 
To people who possess a large share of this rare—shall I say fatal?—characteristic of adhesiveness, living in lodgings is about the saddest life under the sun. Whether some dim foreboding of this fact crossed Elizabeth's mind as she stood at the window watching for her mistresses' first arrival at "home," it is impossible to say. She could feel, though she was not accustomed to analyze²⁴ her feelings. But she looked dull and sad. Not cross, even Ascott could not have accused her of "savageness²⁵."
 
And yet she had been somewhat tried. First, in going out what she termed "marketing," she had traversed a waste of streets, got lost several times, and returned with light weight in her butter, and sand in her moist sugar; also with the conviction that London tradesmen were the greatest rogues²⁶ alive. Secondly²⁷, a pottle of strawberries, which she had bought with her own money to grace the tea-table with the only fruit Miss Leaf cared for, had turned out a large delusion²⁸, big and beautiful at top, and all below small, crushed, and stale. She had thrown it indignantly, pottle and all, into the kitchen fire.
 
Thirdly, she had a war with the landlady²⁹, partly on the subject of their fire—which, with her Stowbury notions on the subject of coals, seemed wretchedly mean and small—and partly on the question of table cloths at tea, which Mrs. Jones had "never heard of," especially when the use of plate and lines was included in the rent. And the dinginess³⁰ of the article produced at last out of an omnium-gatherum sort of kitchen cupboard, made an ominous³¹ impression upon the country girl, accustomed to clean, tidy, country ways—where the kitchen was kept as neat as the parlor, and the bedrooms were not a whit³² behind the sitting rooms in comfort and orderliness. Here it seemed as if, supposing people could show a few respectable living rooms, they were content to sleep any where, and cook any how, out of anything, in the midst of any quantity of confusion and dirt. Elizabeth set all this down as "London," and hated it accordingly.
 
She had tried to ease her mind by arranging and rearranging the furniture—regular lodging² house furniture—table, six chairs, horse-hair sofa, a what not, and the chiffonnier, with a tea-caddy upon it, of which the respective keys had been solemnly presented to Miss Hilary. But still the parlor looked homeless and bare; and the yellowish paper on the walls, the large patterned, many colored Kidderminster on the floor, gave an involuntary sense of discomfort³³ and dreariness³⁴. Besides, No. 15 was on the shady side of the street—cheap lodgings always are; and no one who has not lived in the like lodgings—not a house—can imagine what it is to inhabit perpetually one room where the sunshine just peeps in for an hour a day, and vanishes by eleven A. M.; leaving behind in winter a chill dampness, and in summer a heavy, dusty atmosphere, that weighs like lead on the spirits in spite of one's self. No wonder that, as is statistically³⁵ known and proved, cholera³⁶ stalks, fever rages, and the registrar's list is always swelled³⁷ along the shady side of a London street.
 
Elizabeth felt this, though she had not the dimmest idea why. She stood watching the sunset light fade out of the topmost windows of the opposite house—ghostly reflection of some sunset over fields and trees far away; and she listened to the long monotonous³⁸ cry melting away round the crescent, and beginning again at the other end of the street—"Straw-berries—straw-ber-ries!" Also, with an eye to tomorrow's Sunday dinner, she investigated the cart of the tired costermonger, who crawled along beside his equally tired donkey, reiterating³⁹ at times, in tones hoarse⁴⁰ with a day's bawling⁴¹, his dreary⁴² "Cauli-flower! Cauli-flower!—Fine new pease, sixpence peck!"
 
But, alas⁴³! the pease were neither fine nor new; and the cauliflowers were regular Saturday night's cauliflowers. Besides, Elizabeth suddenly doubted whether she had any right, unordered, to buy these things which, from being common garden necessaries, had become luxuries. This thought, with some others that it occasioned, her unwonted state of Idleness and the dullness of every thing about her—what is so dull as a "quiet" London street on a summer evening?—actually made Elizabeth stand, motionless and meditative⁴⁴, for a quarter of an hour. Then she started to hear two cabs drive up to the door; the "family" had at length arrived.
 
Ascott was there too. Two new portmanteaus and a splendid hat-box east either ignominy or glory upon the poor Stowbury luggage; and—Elizabeth's sharp eye noticed—there was also his trunk which she had seen lying detained for rent in his Gower Street lodgings. But he looked quite easy and comfortable: handed out his Aunt Johanna, commanded the luggage about, and paid the cabmen with such a magnificent air, that they touched their bats to him, and winked⁴⁵ at one another as much as to say. "That's a real gentleman!"
 
In which statement the landlady evidently coincided, and courtesied low when Miss Leaf introducing him as "my nephew," hoped that a room could be found for him. Which at last there was, by his appropriating Miss Leaf's, while she and Hilary took that at the top of the house. But they agreed, Ascott must have a good airy room to study in.
 
"You know, my dear boy," said his Aunt Johanna to him—and at her tender tone he looked a little downcast, as when he was a small fellow and had been forgiven something — "You know you will have to work very hard."
 
"All right, aunt! I'm your man for that! This will be a jolly room; and I can smoke up the chimney capitally!"
 
So they came down stairs quite cheerfully, and Ascott applied⁴⁶ himself with the best of appetites to what he called a "hungry" tea. True, the ham, which Elizabeth had to fetch from an eating house some streets off, cost two shillings a pound, and t............