Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/39

Rh alike. Two or three-foot hawthorn hedge in front, and no division whatever, save an old batten here and there—and the footpaths running up to the back fence—between the vegetable gardens behind. The cottages are double, yet square; four pigeon-hole rooms aside; kitchen-dining-and-general-living-room, with the narrowest and steepest of little stairs running up through it—sort of dirty little ladder with the rungs boxed in. Inevitable dark little parlour in front, with the pitiful little useless toy "suite" on time payment, which is never used. They draw the blind and open the front door sometimes, like the dusty lid of a chest on end, to let some one see the suite, who hasn't seen it before. Two bedrooms upstairs. I haven't seen them, so I don't know what they're like. There must be a spare room for Granny, or Aunt Emma, when she comes for her annual holiday. Some of the family, if there is one, sleep on made-up beds downstairs on such occasions.

But opposite the gate with "Charlton" on it is a double cottage of a much better class, with bow or bay windows—"fitted up like London." This is the Bow Winders that Leonard speaks of. Five rooms; one extended above the wash-house, coal-house and convenience. Sewage runs into a mysterious hole somewhere at the bottom of the orchard. The sewage of the labourers' cottages is buried at the back of the gardens, mostly by moonlight or lantern light. The people of Charlton paid the farmer the difference in the expense of building a better class cottage opposite their gate, so that a square brick hutch wouldn't blink