But Lavinia hardly noticed anything as she flew down the stairs.

The lock could not be opened from the outside without the key, but inside the handle had but to be pushed back and she was in the street.

She pulled her hood well over her head and hastened towards Ludgate Hill.

It was not the nearest route to Grub Street which she knew was somewhere near Moorfields, but she dared not pass her mother's house.
Lavinia knew more about London west of St.Paul's than she did east of it, and she had to ask her way.

Grub Street she found was outside the city wall, many fragments of which were then standing, and she had to pass through the Cripples Gate before she reached the squalid quarter bordering Moor Fields westward, where distressed poets, scurrilous pamphleteers, booksellers' hacks and literary ne'er-do-wells dragged out an uncertain existence.
Lavinia found Fletcher's Court to be a narrow passage with old houses dating from Elizabethan times, whose projecting storeys were so close together that at the top floor one could jump across to the opposite side without much difficulty.