Her Faithful Knight — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Wanderer’s Return. 33 considerable space of uneven waste ground intervened be- tween these erections, speculative builders having begun them on a large scale and come to grief before their com- pletion, and two large and ugly blocks of board schools likewise dishigured the locality. Here, hidden behind an open space inclosed by a tall wooden fence, given up to huge, colored posters advocating popular medicines and plays, two blocks of unpretending one-storied, semi-de- tached houses, bordered by gardens back and front, and facing a row of smaller and meaner dwelling places, stood in a “left behind by the tide” fashion, awaiting the in- evitable moment when they should be swept away by some enterprising builder, and the site devoted to other massive red brick mansions of the most approved modern style. “Lockhart Cottages” was the name painted on the wall of that particular one of these little old houses which was nearest to the high-road, from which, however, they were completely concealed. As if to emphasize their unsuit- ability among these recent palatial surroundings, the ab- surd little houses stood a long way back from the Severn Road, and their front garden gates opened only on a rough piece of ground leading to a mews, and rendered intoler- ably noisy out of lesson hours by the shouts of the children from the schools adjoining. But the way was quiet enough at midnight as Miss Knight hurried by the towering blocks of flats and the waste ground and the hoardings until she reached the most distant of the four semi-detached cottages, divided by a high brick wall from the Board Schools, and shut in as carefully both at the back and at the front, with walls edged with broken glass bottles, as though the house within was of great value and importance, instead of being a modest relic of the past, at a rental of £26 a year. Through a space of lattice work at the top of the door in the garden wall Miss Knight could see a light shining EoOmicbdoo <S (S@)