It
was only No. 900 odd when he began, and he could turn off if he
wished long before he reached 1334. As he drew nearer he said he
would just give a look at it, and then rush by. But 1334 was a house
so much larger and nicer than he had expected that he stopped to
collect his slow rustic thoughts, and decide whether she really
lived there or whether she had just given that number for a blind.
He did not know why he should think that, though; she was dressed
well enough to come out of any house.
While he lingered before the house an old man with a cane in his
hand and his mouth hanging open stopped and peered through his
spectacles, whose glare he fixed upon Lemuel, till he began to feel
himself a suspicious character. The old man did not say anything,
but stood faltering upon his stick and now and then gathering up his
lower lip as if he were going to speak, but not speaking. Lemuel
cleared his throat. "Hmmn! Is this a boarding-house?"
"I don't know," crowed the old man, in a high senile note. "You want
table board or rooms?"
"I don't want board at all," began Lemuel again.
"What?" crowed the old man; and he put up his hand to his ear.
People were beginning to put their heads out of the neighbouring
windows, and to walk slowly as they went by, so as to hear what he
and the old man were saying. He could not run away now, and he went
boldly up to the door of the large house and rang.
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