"Too early for the lamp, I suppose, and yet too dark to read a line." And my stepmother closed her novel, with an impatient snap, as she added, "This is the worst of these horrid, poky lodgings; one never can have anything at the time one wants it. What a dismal little den it is, Gwen! What possessed us to come here?" I could have answered the question promptly and briefly in a single word "Poverty;" but, as it was a term my relative specially detested, I merely shrugged my shoulders, and continued to gaze into the miserable apology for a garden which ran between our quarters and the high street of Stonebrook, an insignificant market town in Sussex. Certainly there was not much to see, amid the creeping shadows of a November afternoon. A dripping hen, wading carefully across the road; a coal-cart, the driver enveloped in empty sacks; and the undertaker's retriever -- black and curly, as an undertaker's dog should be -- sitting in his master's doorway, and yawning most infectiously. If we had lived opposite to the post-office, the lending library, or even the hotel, we should have enjoyed a livelier outlook, but "Mound & Son -- Funeral Establishment -- Coffins, Hearses, and every Requisite," to quote from the inscription over the door, in rigid white characters on a mourning ground, afforded but a gloomy and dispiriting prospect. It was too dark to descry more than the outline of an ornamental sign, on which was depicted an elegant open glass vehicle, drawn by four prancing black horses, with nodding plumes and streaming tails -- triumphant-looking steeds, who seemed to say, "Man treats most of us barbarously all our lives, then kills us, and makes money of our very skin and bones; it affords us sincere pleasure to carry him to the grave, and 'see the last of him.'" The interior of our sitting-room corresponded with its dreary view -- a lodging-house apartmentpur et simple, with narrow windows, hideous wall-paper, the inevitable round table, cheap chiffonier, and bulgy green rep sofa, to complete the picture. The fire was low, and unquestionably in a bad temper, emitting every now and then slow and sullen puffs of yellow smoke. It was raining hard outside, and at regular intervals an intrusive drop came spluttering down the chimney. "Dear me, what a sigh!" exclaimed my stepmother. "Mariana in the Moated Grange could scarcely surpass it! Cheer up, Gwen; a girl of nineteen has no business to be melancholy -- though I grant that you have some provocation. Never meet troubles half-way, that is my motto. I have an idea that our luck will turn soon: I saw two magpies to-day."

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