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CHAPTER VII. In Which William Dent Pitman takes Legal Advice
Norfolk Street, King's Road--jocularly known among Mr Pitman's lodgers
as 'Norfolk Island'--is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing
thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-of-all-work issue from it in
pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening to the voice of
love. The cat's-meat man passes twice a day. An occasional organ-grinder
wanders in and wanders out again, disgusted. In holiday-time the
street is the arena of the young bloods of the neighbourhood, and
the householders have an opportunity of studying the manly art of
self-defence. And yet Norfolk Street has one claim to be respectable,
for it contains not a single shop--unless you count the public-house at
the corner, which is really in the King's Road.
The door of No. 7 bore a brass plate inscribed with the legend 'W. D.
Pitman, Artist'. It was not a particularly clean brass plate, nor was
No. 7 itself a particularly inviting place of residence. And yet it
had a character of its own, such as may well quicken the pulse of
the reader's curiosity. For here was the home of an artist--and a
distinguished artist too, highly distinguished by his ill-success--which
had never been made the subject of an article in the illustrated
magazines. No wood-engraver had ever reproduced 'a corner in the back
drawing-room' or 'the studio mantelpiece' of No. 7; no young lady author
had ever commented on 'the unaffected simplicity' with which Mr Pitman
received her in the midst of his 'treasures'. It is an omission I would
gladly supply, but our business is only with the backward parts and
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