Page:Through South Westland.djvu/261

Rh The front room was a good-sized one, with the usual wide hearth, and hooks to hang one’s billies and kettle (if we had one); there was a bench and table, a dresser, and a broken chair. The inner room had a family bedstead of ample proportions—just a big box on four legs with a sacking-and-grass mattress, and a small table—and that was all. The walls were festooned with ancient picture-papers of the seventies, hanging mice-nibbled and yellow, and the whole place wanted a good clean out. All the implements for this purpose were an old stump of a whisk and a small scrub-brush, but there was plenty of water, so that with the help of an ancient shovel-head, the whisk-stump, and kerosene tin, I soon got rid of the dirt. Transome smoked his pipe and looked on (as he could not help), but gave much valuable advice on the proper way to use a broom, which he demonstrated for my benefit—but we laughed so much, he went off to arrange his sleeping-quarters. Next I unpacked and arranged the stores, and hung our not-wanted clothes on pegs in the inner room, and then Transome called me to see his sleeping arrangements.

I went round the end of the cottage and found the Berline converted into a four-post bed, as it were. Under it, on a layer of springy beech and fern, was the sleeping-bag, a grey rug neatly folded, and over the pillow a square of mosquito netting. He had elected to sleep out of doors, and was highly pleased with his arrangements.