“She seems—a good sort.”
“Yes, and quite girlish still, and gay in herself, though well over fifty, and thinks nothing a trouble. You’ll be takin’ your meals here?”
“Yes, with your permission, Mrs. Hogben.”
“We don’t have many high notions of food—just plain and plenty, ye understand?”
“That will suit me all right.”
“I’ll give you your victuals in the little parlour,” and she opened the door into a small gloomy room, with dead geraniums in the window, a round table in the middle, a horse-hair sofa against the wall, and shells upon the mantelpiece. Evidently the apartment was rarely used; it smelt intolerably of musty hay, and was cold as a vault.
“I think, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take my meals in the kitchen.”
“All right,” she assented, “there’s only me and Tom. Now come away up, and I’ll show you your room.”
The stairs, which climbed round a massive wooden post, were so narrow, so low, and so steep, that getting up was by no means an easy performance.
“Eh, but you’re a fine big man!” declared Mrs. Hogben admiringly, “and somehow you don’t seem to fit in a place of this size; it’s main old too—some say as old as the Manor.”