One of Us

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. On the way upstairs I pass the smoking-room, a circular chamber in one of the towers belonging to the oldest part of the house. Each of the windows is set in a recess twelve feet deep?for such is the thickness of the walls, and the hangings are of old red-and-yellow damask. A wood fire,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. On the way upstairs I pass the smoking-room, a circular chamber in one of the towers belonging to the oldest part of the house. Each of the windows is set in a recess twelve feet deep?for such is the thickness of the walls, and the hangings are of old red-and-yellow damask. A wood fire, sputtering cheerily behind two gleaming brass dogs, and a few knick-knacks of to-day, make it look habitable enough. Against one side moulders a piece of arras of portentous aspect, representing some execution in the Middle Ages. A gentleman in the foregroundis having one eye bored by a large gimlet, but looks on complacently, with the other, as he sits quietly, arms akimbo. A second is stretched upon a rack, and evidently thinks, with a certain poor priest who spoke from experience, that it is a serious thing, sir, to be drawn out eighteen inches beyond one's natural stature, while a few spectators, ?cripples every one of them from birth?lift their hands and look at each other in a My did you ever way. Crimson sky, with green clouds, triangular trees, and mountains considerably bigger at the top than at the bottom, complete the scene, which is interesting, as showing what changes Time works, when he has a fair field and no favour. The bedroom allotted to me lies beyond, and is set off with a companion piece of ghastly tapestry. It is a long, narrow cell, without a fireplace; there is a primeval pincushion and a pre-historic boot-jack, and besides nothing, and room for nothing but improvement. It is getting late. Everything has been unpacked for me, and so ingeniously disposed that I have been playing hunt the slipper ever since I came up. I have run to earth my white ties in a hat-box carefully concealed in a cupboard, and having at last extracted a fifth from th...