M. Todgers's Commercial Boarding-House was a house of that sort which is
likely to be dark at any time; but that morning it was especially dark.
There was an odd smell in the passage, as if the concentrated essence of
all the dinners that had been cooked in the kitchen since the house was
built, lingered at the top of the kitchen stairs to that hour, and like
the Black Friar in Don Juan, 'wouldn't be driven away.' In particular,
there was a sensation of cabbage; as if all the greens that had ever
been boiled there, were evergreens, and flourished in immortal strength.
The parlour was wainscoted, and communicated to strangers a magnetic
and instinctive consciousness of rats and mice. The staircase was very
gloomy and very broad, with balustrades so thick and heavy that they
would have served for a bridge. In a sombre corner on the first landing,
stood a gruff old giant of a clock, with a preposterous coronet of three
brass balls on his head; whom few had ever seen--none ever looked in the
face--and who seemed to continue his heavy tick for no other reason than
to warn heedless people from running into him accidentally.
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