Vol.1 f.053 recto

3 53
first floor, where shops usually are;, and there all resemblance between
it and any other shop, stopped short and ceased. ??? ?? did??? People who went in and out, didn't go up a flight
of steps to it, or walk in easily up in upon a level with the street, ???
but dived down three steep stairs, as into a cellar. Its floor was Paved with stone and brick, as that of any other cellar ...

With all these oddities, there was not a neater, more scrupulously tidy, or more punctiliously ordered house, in Clerkenwell, in London, in all England. There were not cleaner windows, or whiter floors, or brighter stoves, or more highly shining auricles of furniture in old mahogany; there was not more rubbing, scrubbing, burnishing and polishing, in the whole street put together. Nor was this excellence attained without some cost and trouble and great expenditure of voice, as the neighbours were frequently reminded when the good lady of the house overlooked and assisted in its being put to rights on cleaning days -- which were usually from Monday morning till Saturday night, both days inclusive.
Leaning against the door-post of this, his dwelling, the lock-smith stood early on the morning after he had met with the wounded man, gazing disconsolately at a great wooden emblem of a key, painted in vivid yellow to resemble gold, which dangled from the house-front, and swung to and fro with a mournful creaking noise, as if complaining that it had nothing to unlock