CHAPTER THREE.
NUMBER SIX, DULL STREET.
Probably no London street ever rejoiced in a more expressive name than Dull Street.

It was not a specially dirty street, or a specially disreputable street, or a specially dark street.

The neighbourhood might a hundred years ago have been considered "genteel," and the houses even fashionable, and some audacious antiquarians went so far as to assert that the street took its name not from its general appearance at all, but from a worthy London alderman, who in the reign of George the First had owned most of the neighbouring property.
Be that as it may, Dull Street was--and for all I know may still be--one of the dullest streets in London.

A universal seediness pervaded its houses from roof to cellar; nothing was as it should be anywhere.

The window sashes had to be made air-tight by wedges of wood or paper stuck into the frames; a bell in Dull Street rarely sounded after less than six pulls; there was scarcely a sitting-room but had a crack in its grimy ceiling, or a handle off its ill-hung door, or a strip of wall- paper peeling off its walls.