"He's got a good head, Godfrey has, but he wasn't never extry fond o' work, I reckon, and he's growed dreadful rheumatiky lame, and he has his sprees, occasionally.
"Liddy, that's his wife, teacher, she was full good enough for him when ye come to the p'int. Oh, she's a smart wife, and she's had a hard row, so many children and nothin' to do with, as ye might say. Why, they've had thirteen children, ain't they, ma?
"Le' me see—four on 'em dead, and three on 'em—no! four on 'em married, and three on 'em—How is't, ma?"
Grandma then took up the tangled thread of the old Captain's discourse, with calm disdain, and proceeded to disclose an appalling array of statistics, not only in regard to the Cradlebow family, but including generations of men hitherto unknown and remote.
When I signified a desire to retire for the night, Madeline informed me, with a brisk and hopeful air, that my room was "all ready now."
She led the way up a short and narrow little staircase into a low garret, where, amid a dark confusion of objects, I was forcibly reminded of the rows of hard substances suspended from the rafters. Turning to the left, the rays of the candle revealed a small red door framed in among the unpainted boards of the wall.
There, Madeline bade me a flippant and musical good night, and I entered my room, alone.
Within, the contrast between the door and the brown walls was still more effectively drawn.
The bed, neatly made, stood in a niche where the roof slanted perceptibly downward, so that the sweetly unconscious sleeper (as I found afterwards) perchance tossing his head upward, in a dream, was doomed to bring that member into resounding contact with the ceiling, I judged something of the restless proclivities of the last occupants of the room by the amount of plastering of which this particular section had been deprived. In this, and in other places where it had fallen, it had been collected and tacked up again to the ceiling in cloth bags which presented a graceful and drooping, though at first sight, rather enigmatical appearance.
The chimney ran through the room forming a sort of unique centre-piece.