The bill was soon removed.

The new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our interest.
They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less.

The mother wore a widow's weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning.

They were poor--very poor; for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy earned, by copying writings, and translating for booksellers.
They had removed from some country place and settled in London; partly because it afforded better chances of employment for the boy, and partly, perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where they had been in better circumstances, and where their poverty was known.

They were proud under their reverses, and above revealing their wants and privations to strangers.