The streets of those melancholy squares seen
beneath flickering lamp light and a wan moon protest against all gaiety of
spirit and urge resignation and a mournful acquiescence. Bloomsbury is Life
on Thirty Shillings a week without the drama of starvation or the tragedy
of the Embankment, but with all the ignominy of making ends meet under the
stern and relentless eye of a boarding-house keeper.
But of all the sad and unhappy squares in Bloomsbury the saddest is Bennett
Square. It is shut in by all the other Bloomsbury Squares and is further
than any of them from the lights and traffic of popular streets. There are
only four lamp posts there--one at each corner--and between these patches
of light everything is darkness and desolation.
Every house in Bennett Square is a boarding-house, and No. 72 is
Brockett's.
"Mrs. Brockett is a very terrifying but lovable woman," said the Signor
darkly, and Peter, whose spirits had sunk lower and ever lower as he
stumbled through the dark streets, felt, at the sound of this threatening
prophecy, entirely miserable.
No. 72 is certainly the grimiest of the houses in Bennett Square. It is
tall and built of that grey stone that takes the mind of the observer back
to those school precincts of his youth. It is a thin house, not broad and
fat and comfortably bulging, but rather flinging a spiteful glance at the
house that squeezed it in on either side.
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