Chapter II. Tom's early life.

Let us skip a number of years.

London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town--for that day.

It had a hundred thousand inhabitants--some think double as many. The

streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part

where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge. The houses

were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the

third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses

grew, the broader they grew. They were skeletons of strong criss-cross

beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster. The beams were

painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this

gave the houses a very picturesque look. The windows were small, glazed

with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges,

like doors.

The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called

Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety,

but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty's tribe

occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and father had a sort of

bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters,

Bet and Nan, were not restricted--they had all the floor to themselves,

and might sleep where they chose. There were the remains of a blanket or

The Prince and The Pauper