The Mis-Rule of Three by Florence Warden

The Diggings were in a street somewhere off Tottenham Court Road, in a tall, old-fashioned, roomy house which had seen its best days, but which still made a valiant attempt to hold its own in the respectable class in a neighbourhood where respectability is not exactly rampant.

For dingy foreigners of the undesirable class abound exceedingly in those parts, and undesirables of home growth are not unknown there. Indeed, individuals of both these types did get in, now and then, within the hospitable shelter of No. 46 itself, in spite of the anxiety of Mrs Inkersole, the landlady, to preserve the high tone of the house.