We were still
in Staffordshire, a matter on which Margaret had laughingly placed the
utmost importance, though an urchin, standing by the rude signpost, could
have flung a pebble into Cheshire. Houseroom was of the narrowest, and I
was tucked away in the attics, in a room I had to crawl about in
two-double, walking upright being out of the question. It was the grown-up
daughter's room, and she had been bundled out to make place for me, a fact
I did not learn till it was beyond need of remedy. The lass had a good
pleasant woman to mother, but her father, the host, was an
ill-conditioned, surly runt, whose only good point was a still tongue.
Margaret was in the room below, and her father next to her along a narrow
gangway. From my attic I got down to this gangway by means of a staircase
hardly to be told from a ladder. The gangway, just past the Colonel's
door, became a little landing whence three or four steps led down to a
larger landing, from which one could mount up to the other and
corresponding half of the house or descend to the entrance hall with which
the various rooms of the ground floor connected.
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