Page:Hopkinson Smith--In Dickens's London.djvu/24

IN DICKENS'S LONDON "'Sam,' cried the landlady, 'where's that lazy, idle—why Sam—oh, there you are; why don't you answer?'

"'Vouldn't be gen-teel to answer, 'till you'd done talking,' replied Sam, gruffly.

"'Here, clean them shoes for number seventeen directly, and take 'em to private sitting-room, number five, first floor.'

"The landlady flung a pair of lady's shoes into the yard, and bustled away.

"'Number 5,' said Sam, as he picked up the shoes, and taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, made a memorandum of their destination on the soles—'Lady's shoes and private sittin' room! I suppose she didn't come in the vaggin.'

"'She came in early this morning,' cried the girl, who was still leaning over the railing of the gallery, 'with a gentleman in a hackney-coach, and it's him as wants his boots, and you'd better do 'em, and that's all about it.'

"'Vy didn't you say so before?' said Sam, with great indignation, singling out the boots in question from the heap before him. 'For all I know'd he vas one o' the regular three-pennies. Private room! and a lady, too! If he's anything of a gen'lm'n, he's vurth a shillin' a day, let alone the arrands."

No smart young chambermaid called to me from over the balustrade of the upper sleeping gallery when I alighted from a hansom in the courtyard of this same inn, known then and now as "George Inn," and gazed about me this morning in June—nor did any bustling old landlady make her appearance on the opposite gallery. 4