THE CAREER IS SUSPENDED
occurred to Lewisham that thought-reading was one of the most possible things in the world. He blushed, rose clumsily and took the volume of the Encyclopædia back to its shelf.
He found the selection of lodgings a difficult business. After his first essay he began to fancy himself a suspicious-looking character, and that perhaps hampered him. He had chosen the district southward of the Brompton Road. It had one disadvantage—he might blunder into a house with a fellow-student. . . . Not that it mattered vitally. But the fact is, it is rather unusual for married couples to live permanently in furnished lodgings in London. People who are too poor to take a house or a flat commonly find it best to take part of a house or unfurnished apartments. There are in London to every couple living in furnished apartments, a hundred in unfurnished rooms ("with the use of kitchen"). To the discreet landlady the absence of furniture predicates a dangerous want of capital. The first landlady Lewisham interviewed didn't like ladies, they required such a lot of attendance, the second was of the same mind, the third told Mr. Lewisham he was "youngish to be married," the fourth said she only "did" for single "gents." The fifth was a young person with an arch manner, who liked to know all about people she took in, and subjected Lewisham to a searching cross-examination. When she had spitted him in a downright lie or so, she expressed an opinion that her rooms "would scarcely do," and bowed him amiably out.
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