The maid showed me into a very modest parlour, then whisked away towards the back of the house to find her mistress. I stood looking around me. Each parlour window had been raised exactly two inches. Fortunately, in this part of London, the spring air stank only of smoke and street muck, odours mostly offset by the fragrance of the flowers I carried. In London, I had come to realise, those with any spare income at all considered flowers not a luxury, but a necessity for their homes and persons, in order to make living bearable to the sense of smell.

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