When Mrs Raddle came to collect Mr Headstone's rent, she announced herself in her customary manner; that is to say, she opened the door without the preliminary application of her knuckles to its exterior and burst into the room. It is the lot of all of us to be disappointed at some time in life, but it was the lot of Mrs Raddle to be thwarted on a regular monthly basis, and Mr Headstone was invariably the cause. Quite how he came to be in arrears with his rent was a mystery which not even that gentleman himself could explain. He was never disappointed by those who engaged his services on very reasonable terms, and he received a regular income. If any of the pedagogue's creditors doubted this fact, they needed only make enquiries of the landlord at The Saracen's Head, who would be more than willing to corroborate it.
The calculations involved in reconciling income and expenditure have defeated greater minds than Mr Headstone's, and whenever he performed acts of arithmetic in his head (which was possibly the worst place to do it), his reckoning usually resulted in more misery than happiness. Cognisant of the financial obligation he was currently under, Mr Headstone proposed an offer of complimentary instruction in lieu of a monetary emollient, but as neither Mrs Raddle nor her husband felt themselves in need of any further education, the landlady was obliged to retire a disappointed woman.
Mr Charles Dickens
