a cheap and commonplace paper, the wainscoting and the banisters of the broad staircase were of painted wood. This was the portion of the house which had suffered most during its decadence. Olivia, examining everything with an eye keen to discover the good points to be made the most of in her new home, found that where the paint had worn off the staircase and wainscot dark oak was revealed underneath, and she rashly uttered an exclamation of horror at the vandalism of the farm’s late occupants.

“The idea of spoiling beautiful dark oak with this horrid paint! Why, the people who did it ought to be sent to penal servitude!”

Mrs. Wall was scandalized.

“T’ fowk ’as lived here last liked t’ place clean,” she said, severely. “It’ll nivver look t’ same again as it did, wi’ a clean white antimacassar stitched on to ivery cheer, an’ wax flowers under glass sheades in a’ t’ parlor windows. An’ t’ parlor a’ways as neat as a new pin, so ye wur afreaid a’most to coom into ’t. Ah, ye meen talk o’ yer gentlefowk, but they’ll nivver mak’ it look t’ same again!”

Olivia had opened the door to the right, and throwing wide the shutters of one of the three large windows, revealed a long, low-ceilinged room, used as the living room by the late farmer’s family, and having at the further end a wide, high, old-fashioned fireplace, the mouldings of which had been carefully covered with whitewash, now smoked-begrimed and worn into dark streaks. The shutters and the wainscoting, which in this room was breast high upon the walls, had been treated in the same way. Olivia uttered a groan, and turned to the door, afraid of uttering more offensive remarks. Then they went upstairs, and opened the doors of a lot of little meanly papered bedrooms which formed the upper storey of this part of the house. Having allowed the new comers to examine these, while she remained sniffing in the passage, Mrs. Wall shuttled hastily back to the staircase.

“Stop!” cried Olivia, as the old woman placed one downtrodden shoe on the second step; “we haven’t seen the other part of the house at all. Where does this lead to?”

And she peered into a crooked passage which led into the first of the two older wings.

Mrs. Wall paused with evident reluctance.

“There’s nowt yonder but t’ worst o’ t’ bedrooms; ye’ve seen t’ best,” she grumbled.

 Prev. P 13/280 next