The fair way to begin, if you love Mrs. Dowey, is to say to her
that it is a pity she has no bed. If she is in her best form she will
chuckle, and agree that the want of a bed tries her sore; she will keep
you on the hooks, so to speak, as long as she can; and then, with that
mouse-like movement again, she will suddenly spring the bed on you. You
thought it was a wardrobe, but she brings it down from the wall; and lo,
a bed. There is nothing else in her abode (which we now see to contain
four rooms--kitchen, pantry, bedroom, and bathroom) that is absolutely
a surprise; but it is full of 'bits,' every one of which has been paid
ready money for, and gloated over and tended until it has become part of
its owner. Genuine Doweys, the dealers might call them, though there is
probably nothing in the place except the bed that would fetch
half-a-crown.
Her home is in the basement, so that the view is restricted to the lower
half of persons passing overhead beyond the area stairs. Here at the
window Mrs. Dowey sometimes sits of a summer evening gazing, not
sentimentally at a flower-pot which contains one poor bulb, nor
yearningly at some tiny speck of sky, but with unholy relish at holes in
stockings, and the like, which are revealed to her from her point of
vantage.
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