This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII BADGERING THE BILLICKIN The term for which Miss Twinkleton and Rosa had been installed as lodgers in the house of Mrs. Billickin, through the mistaken kindness of Mr. Grewgious, was rapidly drawing to a close, without the Angular man having been made aware that other than the most cerulean sky ever overhung the domestic firmament in that portion of Southhampton Street, Bloomsbury Square. It is always graceful, when the assiduous eagerness of a friend, urging us to a cross-cut by way of abridging long and wearisome distance, has plunged us into a thorn thicket, to the laceration of flesh and raiment, or into a slough, to the discomfort of the one and defilement of the other, --to avoid showing the well-intentioned but mistaken adviser what have been the fruits of his council; and there is a certain wisdom in doing so, unless one is quite prepared to accept a secondary misery in the shape of too many humble apologies, regrets and self-upbraidings. Mr. Grewgious, as both the ladies knew, would have overwhelmed himself with reproaches for having been the means of leading them into any discomfort, the moment he became aware of the fact, --and the more surely so, because the lodging-house keeper chanced to be a distant relation of his own, in whose favor he might be ungenerously suspected to have strained a point at the expense of others. So nothing had been said to him on the subject of the armed neutrality relations--not even after the open rupture already recorded, between the two contending powers, who might be said to have then withdrawn within their own lines of fortification, after a series of light actions causing great discomfort to the neutral power really owning the territory over which they skirmished. The time of the.