But two housemaids
were industriously at work; so that there was good prospect that the
boarding-house might not long suffer from the absence of its most
expensive and profitable guests. Meanwhile, until they should appear,
I cast my eyes downward to the lower regions. There, in the dusk
that so early settles into such places, I saw the red glow of the
kitchen range. The hot cook, or one of her subordinates, with a
ladle in her hand, came to draw a cool breath at the back door. As
soon as she disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a white jacket,
crept slyly forth, and threw away the fragments of a china dish,
which, unquestionably, he had just broken. Soon afterwards, a lady,
showily dressed, with a curling front of what must have been false
hair, and reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue,--though my remoteness
allowed me only to guess at such particulars,--this respectable
mistress of the boarding-house made a momentary transit across the
kitchen window, and appeared no more. It was her final,
comprehensive glance, in order to make sure that soup, fish, and
flesh were in a proper state of readiness, before the serving up of
dinner.
There was nothing else worth noticing about the house, unless it be
that on the peak of one of the dormer windows which opened out of the
roof sat a dove, looking very dreary and forlorn; insomuch that I
wondered why she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain, while her
kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm and comfortable dove-cote.
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