One hot summer's day the sun was trying to shine into a poor, miserablealley in London. There are some places in that great city where even thesun cannot find its way, and Primrose Place was one of them.It was a very narrow court, and the houses on both sides were so high thatthe people who lived there had never seen the sunbeams shining on thepavement or glinting on the windows. But even supposing the sun could haveshone into the court, it would not have been able to pierce into therooms, for the windows were too dirty. Most of them were broken andpatched with brown paper. The doors of the houses always stood open,so that people could go in and out without knocking. Very few of themcould afford to pay enough rent to have two rooms all to themselves,so that a whole family was generally huddled into one room, in which theyhad to live during the day and sleep at night. But most of the daytime wasspent by the inhabitants of Primrose Place out of doors, lounging about onthe pavement, or sitting on the doorsteps. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.