CICELY CROWE
I
Our house is a long one; it takes two minutes to walk from one end to the other, consequently by the time one has gone from the principal staircase at the east extremity to the kitchen at the west, one is older by two minutes; whether one has grown in the time I am unable to say, never having taken measures before starting and on arriving. It is satisfactory that the staircase and not the dining-room occupies the extreme east, otherwise we should always partake of cold meals.
But as if the main block of the house were not, in all conscience, long enough, at some unknown period since its first construction a back kitchen was added beyond the kitchen, farther west, and then, a little room only reached by a stair farther west still. This little “prophet’s chamber” was, however, one used within my recollection for the keeping of the feathers of geese and fowls that had been plucked, where they accumulated till sufficient for the composition of a feather bed, when they were picked, cleaned, baked, and made up.
Before this final process I well remember, as a child of eight or nine, scrambling into this little chamber, and then rolling and dancing among the feathers, and making, as I believed, a snowstorm about me. The after effects were not conducive to comfort; and I remember that the process of scrubbing and cleansing me and my clothes after this snowstorm was both irksome and lengthy. That experience was never repeated, not only because of the cleansing process, but also because I was put across my father’s knee, and the lesson not to play with feathers and raise snowstorms was impressed on me with a square ruler, till my father got hot in the face, and I—hot, elsewhere.
The same little stair that conducted to the feather room, also gave admission to a low garret above the back kitchen.
This garret contained all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable lumber.