The old woman had "failed a deal of late," he said.

He "_had_ heard she wasn't right in her mind, but whether they'd shifted her to a 'sylum or not, he couldn't say." If she was at home, she was at an address which he gave us.
"Will you go, Dennis?
I must.

At once." "Of course." Biddy was at home, and never whilst I live can I forget the "home." Four blocks of high houses enclosed a small court into which there was one entrance, an archway through one of the buildings.

All the houses opened into the court.

There were no back-doors, and no back premises whatever.
All the dirt and (as to washing) all the cleanliness of a crowded community living in rooms in flats, the quarrelling and the love-making, the old people's resting, and the children's playing;--from emptying a slop-pail to getting a breath of evening air--this court was all there was for it.