When Miss Nettleship returned, tired and apologetic, but more plaintive than ever, she showed Lydia the rest of the house.
It was built with a total disregard for domestic convenience, that Miss Nettleship assured Lydia was characteristic of old-fashioned London houses, but which she could not sufficiently deplore.
“So difficult ever to get a servant to come here, let alone stay here,” said Miss Nettleship, sighing.
Lydia did not altogether wonder at it, when she saw the basement, occupied by kitchen, pantry, and scullery, a gas-jet permanently burning in the two latter divisions—and the only outlook of the former, rising area steps, iron railings with cracked paint, and the feet of the passers-by on the pavement.
The kitchen stairs, which led to the narrow hall, were stone, very steep, and perfectly dark.
“However they do, with the trays and all, is more than I can guess. Not that I don’t carry them myself, often enough—but my heart’s in my mouth the whole time. And girls are so careless, too! We had one broke her ankle, running down these stairs, not a year ago. Luckily she wasn’t carrying anything but an empty tray at the time, but you never heard such a noise and a rattling in all your life! It’s wicked not having the serving on the same floor as the dining-room, is what I say.”
The dining-room was on the ground floor. It was a large room, with a long table already laid for dinner, running down the middle of it, and dusty aspidistras in pots stood in the bay windows, looking out, through yellowing Nottingham lace curtains, at the grimy dignity of the London plane trees on the far side of the Square railings.
Opposite the dining-room was a smoking-room, Miss Nettleship told Lydia.
“Better not look in now, perhaps,” she said. “Some of the gentlemen may be in there.”
“How many boarders are here now?”