Close and dark it was, the walls stained
with dampness and the ceiling full of bald places that showed the
lathing. The furniture was cheap and meagre, including conspicuously the
small, curious-looking hair-trunk. The floor was of wide slabs fastened
down with spikes, and sloping up and down in one or two broad
undulations, as if they had drifted far enough down the current of time
to feel the tide-swell.
However, the floor was clean, the bed well made, the cypress table in
place, and the musty smell of the walls partly neutralized by a geranium
on the window-sill.
He so coming in and sitting down, an unseen person called from the room
adjoining (of which, also, he was still the rentee), to know if he were
he, and being answered in the affirmative, said, "Papa George guess who
was here to-day?"
"Kookoo, for the rent?"
"Yes, but he will not come back."
"No? why not?"
"Because you will not pay him."
"No? and why not?"
"Because I have paid him."
"Impossible! where did you get the money?"
"Cannot guess?--Mother Nativity.
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