Bag and Baggage/A Double Pretender

A DOUBLE PRETENDER"FULWOOD'S RENTS" was, in 1750, a quite self-important little Court, and notable above the most of those which neighboured on the fashionable seclusion of Gray's Inn Gardens. It possessed two very opposite claims to distinction—conviviality and exclusiveness. The first illustrated itself in a number of reputable houses of entertainment, which included, among others, the Castle and Golden Griffin Taverns, John's and Squire's Coffee-houses, and the punch-shop once kept by Ned Ward of the "Spy," who had figured in the "Dunciad." The second was vested primarily in Miss Arabella Pitcher's Finishing School for young ladies.
How this last establishment had ever come to leaven the sociality of Fulwood's was an unrelated chapter in the story of the Court. A strange lock of secrecy seemed to hold its walls curiously rigid and its wire-blinded windows curiously vacant. Its conventual mystery was even supposed a veil to something unconformable and subversive, though nobody knew exactly of what. Certainly the vision of its half-score little Misses issuing for their daily promenade in the gardens (to which an upper passage gave them access, without need to traverse the Court),

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