The furniture was of the oldest, black with age, worm-eaten, ponderous;
queer old four-post bedsteads, with dingy hangings of greenish brown or
yellowish green, from which every vestige of the original hue had faded
long ago; clumsy bureaus, and stiff high-backed chairs with thick legs
and gouty feet, heavy to move and uncomfortable to sit upon. The house
was clean enough, and the bare floors of the numerous bed-chambers, which
were only enlivened here and there with small strips or bands of Dutch
carpet, sent up a homely odour of soft soap; for Mrs. Tadman took a
fierce delight in cleaning, and the solitary household drudge who toiled
under her orders had a hard time of it. There was a dismal kind of
neatness about everything, and a bleak empty look in the sparsely
furnished rooms, which wore no pleasant sign of occupation, no look of
home. The humblest cottage, with four tiny square rooms and a thatched
roof, and just a patch of old-fashioned garden with a sweetbrier hedge
and roses growing here and there among the cabbages; would have been a
pleasanter habitation than Wyncomb, Ellen Carley thought.
Mr. Whitelaw exhibited an unwonted liberality upon this occasion. The
dinner was a ponderous banquet, and the dessert a noble display of nuts
and oranges, figs and almonds and raisins, flanked by two old-fashioned
decanters of port and sherry; and both the bailiff and his host did ample
justice to the feast.
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