and stopped at the next house. First of all my fairy godmother alighted, slowly, as all her actions were, and then followed the veritable Cinderella of my fancy. Cinderella just from the fields and monotonous toil, with her eyes shining out to the first mad glamour of London town; Cinderella, in poor, coarse dress, with the face of an angel and the form of a perfect woman.
For a few minutes she stood there, watching her corded wood box being lifted down, while her companion walked slowly into the house, and—in my imagination—stood waiting in the hall with a welcome when the girl rejoined her.
Whether it was that after the new arrival I began to notice the house on the right more closely than before, or whether other people also had gone in, I cannot say, but certainly from that time I grew conscious of new and unascribable sounds and incidents. Through the open window came the frequent sounds of voices in dispute, a voice in tears and entreaty, and a hard, coarse female voice—utterly irreconcilable with anyone I had seen—raised in threats and anger. I came to the absolute certainty that the house was occupied by more than one set of people.
The houses are substantial and the partitions thick, for they were built at a Georgian period, when ugliness and solidity were alike aimed at. But one night there came a knocking at the wall on the right that no amount of brick and mortar could quite deaden. It was the mad beating of two clenched hands, like the dashing of the wings of a newly-caged bird against the wires of its prison. I flung open a window and stepped out. At the same moment a door in the next room slammed, the light went out, and all was still. From one balcony to another is only a step; but what can one do? What but to shrug one's shoulders, and go back in again.
