LET us skip a number of years

Мультиязыковой проект Ильи Франка www.franklang.ru

London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town — for that day.

It had a hundred thousand inhabitants — some think double as many. The

Streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part where

Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge.

The houses were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and

The third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses

Grew, the broader they grew. They were skeletons of strong crisscross beams,

With solid material between, coated with plaster. The beams were painted red

or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this gave the houses a

Very picturesque look. The windows were small, glazed with little diamond-

Shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges, like doors.

The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called Offal

Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety, but it was

packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty's tribe occupied a room on the

Third floor. The mother and father had a sort of bedstead in the corner; but

Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, Bet and Nan, were not restricted

— they had all the floor to themselves, and might sleep where they chose.